I hope you were amused with my attack upon the Americans. They really deserved it. It is a monstrous and increasing villany. Fancy a meeting in Philadelphia, convened by public advertisement, where they came to resolutions that the debt was too great for the people to pay, that the people could not pay it, and ought not to pay it! I have not a conception that the creditors will ever have a single shilling.
Tell Lord Grey I recommend to his attention, in the forthcoming Edinburgh Review, an article upon Ireland by Senior, the Master in Chancery, which I think admirable; it contains, in my humble estimation, an enumeration of the medicines, and a statement of the treatment, necessary for your distracted country; in defence of which I always state that it has at least produced Lady Grey.
I keep my health tolerably well: occasionally fits of gout, but my eyes are in good preservation; and while I can read and can write, I have no care about age. I should add another condition,—that I must have no pain. I am reading the Letters to George Selwyn, by which I am amused. Many of them are written with wit and spirit; they bring before me people of whom I know a little; and the notes are so copious, that the book makes a history of those times; certainly, a history of the manners and mode of life of the upper orders of society.
Remember me very kindly and affectionately to my
MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 507 |