I have not written to you, because I have been very busy; but I always felt that I ought, and that I wished, to write to you.
We pressed —— to stay longer, but she is a great politician, and has some mysterious reasons for returning, which I could not fathom, though I let down my deep-sea line; probably they are connected with the present precarious state of the Bourbons, and the lingering and protracted war carried on in the Spanish colonies. The natives admired her eyes very much, and said they were very different from Yorkshire eyes. They indeed express every soft and amiable virtue, with just as much of wickedness as is necessary to prevent insipidity.
| 136 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
I ought to apologize to you for not having said anything of the Princess. Youth and fertility quenched by death is a melancholy event, let the rank of the victim be what it may; but her death is not of any political importance; the root remains deep in the earth, and it matters not which becomes the leading shoot.
I shall bring up your friend Douglas to Westminster after Easter, when I hope, my dear little friend, to see you in town. I shall have a mean idea of your powers, if, between coaxing, scolding, plaguing, and reasoning, you cannot make Lord Tankerville take a house.
I always tell you all the books worth notice that I read, and I rather counsel you to read Jacob’s ‘Spain,’ a book with some good sense in it, and not unentertaining; also, by all means, the first volume of Franklin’s Letters. I will disinherit you if you do not admire everything written by Franklin. In addition to all other good qualities, he was thoroughly honest.
We have had Sir Humphry Davy here. A spurious Aladdin has sprung up in Northumberland, and pretends that the magical lamp belongs to him. There is no end to human presumption and arrogance,—though nobody has as yet pretended to be Lady Mary Bennett.
