London, Jan. 19th, 1827.

Dearest Julia,

R—— left London to-day for Harwich, and will be with you in a fortnight. I know how glad you will be to have a living witness of the sayings and doings of your L——; one whom you can question about so many things which, even with the best intentions cannot always find place in letters.

I have now settled myself into a town life again. Yesterday I dined with Prince E——, where the—— secretary of legation kept us in an incessant laugh. He is a kind of agreeable buffoon, and although of very mean extraction, a superlative ultra; (‘tel le maitre, tel le valet.’) I have often admired the talent of the French, and envied it too, for making the most amusing stories out of the most common-place incidents;—such as lose all their salt coming from any mouth but theirs.

Nobody possesses this talent in a higher degree than Monsieur R——. He affords another proof that it is entirely the result of a language so admirably adapted to produce it, and of an education which springs from the same source; for Monsieur R—— is a German—I think a Swabian; but was brought to France when only two years old, and educated as a Frenchman. Language makes the man, more than blood;—though ’tis true, blood has first made the language.

‘Au reste,’ one must acknowledge that however brilliant such agreeable chatter may be at the moment, it goes out like a fusee, and leaves nothing on the memory; so that the pedantic German feels a sort of uneasiness after listening to it, and regrets having spent his time so unprofitably. Had it been possible to that element of Germanism which formed our language, to give it that lightness, roundness, agreeable equivocalness, and at the same time precision and definiteness,—qualities which are called into full play in society by French audacity,—the conversation of the German would certainly have been the more satisfactory of the two, for he would never have neglected to connect the useful with the agreeable. As it is, we Germans have nothing left in society, but that sort of talent which the French call ‘l’esprit des escaliers;’—that, namely, which suggests to a man as he is going down stairs, the clever things he might have said in the ‘salon.’

Of this Frenchman’s fireworks and crackers I retain nothing but the following anecdote. A diplomatic writer, who passed as authority in the time of Louis the Fourteenth, concluded a treatise on the great privileges pertaining to foreign envoys, with the following words;—‘mais dÈs qu’un ambassadeur est mort, il rentre dans la vie privÉe.’

January 22nd.

The poor Duke of York is at length dead, after a long illness, and lay in state yesterday with great magnificence. I saw him in October, and found him, even then, the shadow of the robust stately man whom I had formerly so often seen at Lady L——’s, and at his own house, where six bottles of claret after dinner scarcely made a perceptible change in his countenance. I remember that in one such evening,—it was indeed already after midnight,—he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian Ambassador, Count Meerveldt, Count Beroldingen, and myself, into his beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp; whence it happened that the Duke and Count Meerveldt both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword, so as to draw blood. Count Meerveldt then wished to try if it cut as well as a real Damascus, and undertook to cut through one of the wax candles which stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping about in the dark, and trying to find the door, the Duke’s aide-de-camp, Colonel C——, stammered out in great agitation, “By God, Sir, I remember the sword is poisoned!” You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this intelligence. Happily on further examination it appeared that claret and not poison was at the bottom of the Colonel’s exclamation.

The Duke seems to be much regretted, and the whole country wears deep mourning for him, with crape on the hat, and black gloves, ‘ce qui fait le dÉsespoir’ of all shopkeepers. People put their servants into black liveries, and write on paper with a broad black edge. Meantime the Christmas pantomimes go on as merrily as ever. It has a strange effect to see Harlequin and Columbine skipping about on the stage in all conceivable frivolities and antics, while the coal-black audience, dressed as for a funeral procession, clap and shout with delight.

I this minute received your letter from B——. Really so merry, I might almost say so pungent a one, you have not written of a long time. The B—— originals seem to have quite electrified you, and though I rejoice at it, I can’t help being a little jealous. But you will soon come back to your original. I say with CÆsar, I fear not the fat, but the lean; and so long as you tell me that you preserve your charming ‘embonpoint,’ I am easy. I had a great mind, however, to plague you a little in return; but I know you don’t bear jesting ‘par distance’ well, so I abstain. To vent my humour in some way, I send you a bit out of my journal,—a ‘pendant’ to your African Travels; for the poor meagre journal is still alive, though it has received no nutriment by the month together, and the little it has had, has not the least ‘haut gout.’ Don’t expect, therefore, anything facetious or satirical, but something quite serious. It is laid upon you as a punishment.

EXTRACTS FROM MY JOURNAL.

I was lately reading a review of Lady Morgan’s Salvator Rosa. A passage in it touched me deeply, ‘et pour cause.’ It is the very original description of her hero, nearly as follows.

“With a thirst for praise, which scarcely any applause could satisfy, Salvator united a quickness of perception that rendered him suspicious of pleasing, even at the moment he was most successful. A gaping mouth, a closing lid, a languid look, or an impatient hem! threw him into utter confusion, and deprived him of all presence of mind, of all power of concealing his mortification.... Abandoned by the idle and the great, whom his delightful talents had so long contributed to amuse, he voluntarily excluded himself from the few true and staunch friends who clung to him in his adversity, and shut himself up equally from all he loved and all he despised.... His reference to this journey is curious, as being illustrative of those high imaginations, and lofty and lonely feelings, in which lay all the secret of his peculiar genius: while his pantings after solitude, his vain repinings, exhibit the struggles of a mind divided between a natural love of repose and a factitious ambition for the world’s notice and the eclat of fame,—no unusual contrast in those who, being highly gifted and highly organized, are placed by nature above their species in all the splendid endowments of intellect; and who are, by the same nature, again drawn down to its level through their social and sympathetic affections.... His fine but fatal organization, which rendered him so susceptible of impressions, whether of good or evil, and which left him at times no shelter against ‘horrible imaginings,’ or against those real inflictions, calumny and slander, plunged him too frequently into fits of listless melancholy, when, disabused of all illusion, he saw the species to which he belonged in all the nakedness of its inherent infirmity.”

Yes, this picture is copied from the very soul; and it is no less true, that a man born with such a disposition can never feel at ease or happy in the world which surrounds him, unless he be placed very much above it, or live in it entirely unnoticed.

So far I was led by the thoughts of others. Now I must conclude for to-day with a few of my own, the subject of which lies far nearer to our inmost hearts; and discuss a question, the full investigation of which must interest every one, be he ever so little a philosopher by profession.

What is conscience?

Conscience has unquestionably a twofold nature, as it has a twofold source. The one flows from our highest strength, the other from our greatest weakness; the one from the spirit of God dwelling in us, the other from sensual fear. Perfectly to dissever and distinguish these two kinds of conscience, is necessary to that serenity of mind which can arise only out of the utmost possible clearness: for man, when he has once got beyond the original dominant instinct of feeling, attains to the Permanent, even the recognition of truth, only by mental labour and conflict,—the moral ‘sweat of his brow.’

Man, however, is a whole, compounded of countless parts; and it is only in the perfect equipoise of these parts, that, as man—that is, as a being at once sensual and spiritual—he can obtain perfect happiness and contentment. It is the common, ever-recurring error, to strive to cultivate one side predominantly:—with one man it is the province of religion; with another, that of severe reason; with the man of the world, those of the understanding and the senses alone. But all these together, exercised, enjoyed, and blended, so to speak, with artist-like skill, can alone produce the most perfect Life for this earth, and for our destinies while upon it,—the complete, entire Truth.

Under this point of view, then, must that which we call Conscience be considered, and the true distinguished from the false.

Under the head of the True, I understand the infallible suggestions of the divine spirit in us; which restrains us from evil, generally, as from the wholly one-sided, inconsistent, and negative: and this requires no further explanation. By the False, I mean that which arises only from the Conventional; from custom, authority, from subtleties which have grown out of these foundations, and from overstrained anxiety;—in a word, from fear. Delicate, excitable natures, in whom the cerebral system predominates, in whom, therefore, the head and the fancy are more powerful and active than the heart: in whom the distributing intellect too easily breaks up and scatters the depth and intensity of the full feelings, are most subject to this kind of error. It is, however, so difficult to follow these subtle ramifications and secret counter-workings, that we often take that for a primary feeling, which is only the retro-action of a sophistical intellect.

Now, as right and wrong, applied to the individual actions of human life with all their various conditions and intricacies, must obviously be relative; nothing remains but that every man should, with the help of all the powers of his soul, make quite clear to himself, sincerely and faithfully lay down to himself, what he can reasonably regard as right and what as wrong; and having ascertained it, thenceforward tranquilly apply that standard; and not trouble himself further about his so-called conscience; that is, the inward uneasiness and uncertainty which disturb the mind under new and conflicting circumstances. These cannot possibly be avoided; since the distinctions we have heard of right and wrong, reasonable and absurd, in our childhood and early youth, will ever exercise an irresistible influence.[41]

To give a few exemplifications.—A man of gentle temper, educated in the fear of God and the love of man, who becomes a soldier, the first time he has to take deliberate aim at human life will hardly do it without a strong pang of conscience. So, at least, it was with me. Nevertheless it is his duty; a duty which may be justified on higher, although worldly grounds; so long at least as mankind are not further advanced than they now are.

In like manner, he who after a long struggle forswears the religion of his fathers—the daily repeated lesson of his youth,—and embraces another on full conviction that it is better, will generally feel a slight, but difficultly subdued inquietude; and it is with that, just as it is with the most absurd fear of ghosts in those who have been educated in the belief of ghosts. They have a ghost-conscience, which they cannot get rid of. Nay, even more; with irritable characters, the mere persuasion that others hold them guilty of an evil action will give them so much the feeling of an evil conscience, that it appears in all its usual outward signs—embarrassment, blushing, and turning pale.

This may be carried so far as to lead to insanity. For instance: A man universally believed to have killed another, or one who really, though quite innocently, has killed another, may never enjoy a moment’s tranquillity or happiness again. We even read of a Bramin, whose religious creed makes the murder of an insect as criminal as that of a man, who killed himself because an English ‘savant’ told him that he never drank a glass of water without destroying thousands of invisible creatures. ‘Il n’y a qu’un pas du sublime au ridicule.’

Ugoni, in his Life of one of the most conscientious of men, Passaroni, relates that as he was one day going over the bridge of the ‘Porta Orientale,’ he saw a man lying fast asleep on the broad stone parapet, whence, if suddenly waked, he would probably have fallen into the river. He seized him by the arm, with difficulty aroused him, and with still greater made him understand why he had waked him. The porter, in a passion, requited his trouble with a hearty curse, and bid him go to the devil. Passaroni, greatly mortified and grieved at being the innocent cause of the man’s wrath, pulled out a handful of coin, and gave it to him to drink the giver’s health. Thereupon he left him quite satisfied; but had scarcely reached the end of the bridge, when it struck him that his gift would probably produce even worse consequences than his waking of the man had done; for that it would very likely lead the poor fellow into the crime of drunkenness. He immediately hurried back in great anxiety, found the man fortunately at the same spot, where he had laid himself down again exactly in his old position, and begged him, with some embarrassment, to give him back so much of the money as he did not want for his most pressing necessities. But as the rage of the porter, who thought himself fooled, now boiled over more furiously than ever, Passaroni devised another expedient: “Here, my friend,” said he, “as you will not give me anything back, take another scudo, and promise me solemnly, that if you spend all the rest of the money in drink, you will buy something with that scudo to eat with it.” Having received this promise from the ‘fachino,’ Passaroni’s conscience was at length at rest, and he went contentedly home.

We must, I repeat,—if we would not be either unhappy, or ridiculous, and like a reed shaken with every wind,—educate our consciences as well as all the other faculties of our souls: that is, while we preserve them in all their purity, prescribe to them due limits; for even the noblest are otherwise liable to deterioration and perversion. The simplest and most universally applicable and universally intelligible guide is the precept of Christ, “Do not unto others (nor, we might add, to yourselves) what ye would not that others do unto you.”

But as there exist, as yet, no true Christians, certain exceptions to this rule are, and, in the present state of society, must be, permitted, as for instance, the case of the soldier above cited; or that of a man who obeys the laws of honour, which in certain stations it is utterly impossible to brave. And then there remains no other solution of the difficulty, than to allow to others the same liberty of making exceptions that we find ourselves compelled to claim;—in this way we just manage to preserve charity, and, at all events, that justice which is called the ‘lex talionis.’

That man has a happy, an enviable existence, to whom nature and surrounding circumstances have made it easy or possible to walk constantly in a beaten track; to be, from youth upwards, kind and loving, moderate in his desires and pure in his actions. The first fault is pregnant with sorrow and evil; for, as our philosophical poet so truly says,

And regeneration in this life is not always to be attained. May it not, then, be the last and highest act of mercy of Eternal Love, to have appointed death as a means of wiping out the confused and blotted scrawl, and restoring the troubled, misguided, soul to the condition of a pure white sheet, ready for happier trials? For that upon which the Holy has already been written here, must far higher bliss be in store. All-loving Justice punishes not as weak man punishes; but it can reward only where reward is due,—where it follows as an inevitable consequence of the past.

January 21st.

It is become very cold again, and the fire-place, ‘wo Tag und Nacht die Kohle brennt,’ is unhappily quite insufficient to produce a warm room, such as our stoves—which, spite of their ugliness, I now think of as admirably efficient—procure us. To set my blood in motion I ride the more, and to-day, on my way home, saw one of the many Cosmorames exhibited here, which certainly affords a very agreeable chamber journey, as they call it in B——. The picture of the Coronation of Charles the Tenth in the Cathedral at Rheims, doubtless gave me a far more commodious view of it than I should have had in the crowded church. But what tasteless costume, from the King to the lowest courtier! New and old mixed in the most ludicrous and offensive manner! If people will perform such farces, the least they can do is to make them as pretty as those at Franconi’s. The ruins of Palmyra lay outstretched in solemn majesty in the boundless Desert, which a caravan in the distant horizon is slowly traversing under a torrid sun.

The most perfect illusion was the great fire at Edinburg:—it actually burned. You saw the flames stream upwards; then clouds of black smoke ascend; while the view of the whole landscape incessantly changed with the changes of this fearful light, just as in a real fire. Probably the proprietor’s kitchen was behind the picture, and the fire which heated the fancy of credulous spectators like myself, roasted the leg of mutton which our shillings paid for.

January 28th.

For some days I have vegetated too completely to have much to write to you about. This morning I was not a little surprised to see R——, whom I thought almost with you, enter my room. He had been shipwrecked on his way to Hamburg, and driven back by the storm to Harwich; had passed a whole night in imminent peril, and is so heartily frightened, that he will hear no more of the sea as long as he lives. I therefore send him by Calais, and only write that you may not be uneasy. He has unfortunately lost some of the things he took for you.

Hyde Park afforded a new spectacle this morning. The large lake was frozen, and swarmed with a gay and countless multitude of skaters and others, who enjoyed these wintry pleasures, so rare here, with true child-like delight. A few years ago, in weather like this, a strange wager was laid. The notorious Hunt deals in shoe-blacking: a large sort of wagon filled with it and drawn by four fine horses, which the young gentleman his son drives ‘four-in-hand,’ daily traverses the city in all directions. This young Hunt betted a hundred pounds that he would drive the equipage in question at full speed across the ‘Serpentine,’ and won his wager in brilliant style. A caricature immortalized this feat, and the sale of his blacking, as is reasonable, increased threefold.

My house is grown very musical, for Miss A——, a newly-engaged opera-singer, has come to live in it. The thin English walls give me the advantage of hearing her every morning gratis.

I have not been well for some days. The town air does not agree with me, and compels me to follow a ‘rÉgime’ like that in your song:—

C—— Hall, Feb. 2d.

Lord D——, to whose wife I had been introduced in London, invited me to visit him for a few days at his country house. I accepted his invitation with more pleasure because C—— Hall is the place of which Repton says that he had laboured at its embellishment, together with its proprietor, forty years ago. Indeed it does him the greatest honour; though, from all I saw and heard, it appeared to me that the admirable taste of its Lord was entitled to the largest share of the merit; especially in sparing old trees which Repton would have removed. Nevertheless an honourable feeling of gratitude has dedicated an alcove, commanding a wonderfully beautiful prospect, to the man to whom landscape-gardening is so much indebted. Repton’s son, who was with us, had told Lady D—— a great deal about M——; and as she is almost as good a ‘parkomane’ as myself, we had a very attractive subject in common, and walked about for some hours in the flower-garden, which is still more tasteful than splendid, and is adorned with some graceful marble statues by Canova.

I did not see the master of the house, who was suffering from gout, till we came down to dinner, when I met a large company; amongst others Lord M——, who had just been to inspect the ships of war lying in the Thames.

Lord D—— was lying on a sofa, covered with a Scotch plaid, and embarrassed me a little by his first address.

“You don’t know me,” said he, “and yet we saw each other very often thirty years ago.” Now as I was in frocks at the time he spoke of, I was obliged to beg for a further explanation, though I cannot say I was much delighted at having my age so fully discussed before all the company,—for you know I claim not to look more than thirty. However, I could but admire Lord D——’s memory. He remembered every circumstance of his visit to my parents with the Duke of Portland, and recalled to me many a little forgotten incident. What originals were then to be found, and how joyously and heartily people entered into all sorts of amusement in those days, his conversation gave me new and very entertaining proof of.

He mentioned among others a certain Baron, who believed as firmly in ghosts as in the Gospel, and held Cagliostro for a sort of Messias. One day when he went out alone, to skate on the lake near our house, the whole party dressed themselves in sheets and other things borrowed from the wardrobe of the theatre, and presented to the eyes of the terrified Illuminatus the awful appearance of a party of ghosts, in broad daylight, on the ice. In mortal terror he fell on his knees, spite of his skates; and with a volubility which the venerable Lord could not think of, even now, without laughing, uttered “Abracadabra,” and bits of Faust’s incantations, interspersed with fragments of quavering psalms. During this, one of the ghosts, who, with the help of a long stick under his sheet, made himself sometimes tall and sometimes low, slipped and fell, stripped of all disguise, directly before the knees of the praying Baron. His faith was too robust, however, to be shaken by such a trifle. On the contrary, his terror was increased to such a pitch, that he sprang up, fell again, in consequence of his unlucky ‘chaussure,’ but soon scrambled up, and with a dexterity no one gave him credit for before, vanished like the wind, amid the cheers of the whole company.

Even the confession of the whole joke by the actors in it never could convince him that he had been hoaxed, and no power on earth could ever induce him to see the frightful lake again as long as he remained at M——.

You know I cannot avoid the reflections which often fill me with melancholy even on the most joyous occasions. So was it with me now, as Lord D—— thus conjured up before me the picture of departed times;—as he eulogized my grandfather’s amiable character, described my mother’s high spirit, and what a wild child I was: ‘HÉlas, ils sont passÉs ces jours de fÊte.’ The amiable man has long lain mouldering in his grave; the high-spirited young woman is old, and no longer high-spirited; and even the wild boy is more than tamed—nay, not very far from those days in which he will say, “I have no pleasure in them:” the mad-cap young Englishman who played the ghost on the ice, lay before me, an old man, tortured with gout, stretched helpless on a sofa,—the tale of the merry pranks of his youth interrupted by sighs extorted by pain; while the poor fool whom he so terrified as ghost has long been a ghost himself, and the good Lord would be not a little alarmed if his visit happened to be returned. “Oh world, world!” as Napoleon said.[42]

February 3d:—Evening.

Lord D—— possesses a fine collection of pictures, among which are Titian’s celebrated Venus; the death of Regulus, by Salvator Rosa; a large picture of Rubens, which has frequently been engraved; and a very fine Guido. In the two latter indeed, a not very agreeable subject, a lifeless head, is the principal object; in the one that of Cyrus, in the other that of John the Baptist. But Guido’s Herodias is another of those figures instinct with the genius of poetical, divine beauty, uniting the most lovely womanliness with the deepest tragic expression, which leave so indelible an impression, and are so seldom found in reality. There is a lady of your acquaintance who corresponds with this ideal, Countess A—— of B——. She was, when I knew her,[43] the most beautiful and richly dressed woman I ever beheld. Perfect symmetry, absolute harmony, reigned in her person and in her mind; so that the most heterogeneous things equally became her. Majestic as a queen, when she was ‘en representation;’ distinguished by the most easy and graceful manners, the most exquisite knowledge of the world, when doing the honours of her own house; and by the most ‘naÏve,’ touching kindness and sweetness in the circle of her family;—but under every aspect rendered more interesting and impressive by a trace of thoughtful melancholy never wholly effaced, allied to that perfect feminine tenderness which gives to woman the highest and most resistless charm in the eyes of men;—her resemblance to this picture of Guido’s was striking. Two very pretty attendants of Herodias are in admirable contrast with the main figure. They are perfect ladies-in-waiting, who have no soul for anything beyond their court and their service; and their beauty receives from its very unmeaningness a certain rather animal character, which we can contemplate with an agreeable carelessness—a sort of repose to the mind after the profound and thrilling impression made by the main figure. The one is watching the glance of her mistress with an unmeaning smile; the other looks at the head of the Martyr in the charger with the same indifference as if it were ‘a pudding.’

I must describe to you, once for all, the ‘vie de chÂteau’ in England; of course only the common canvas, on which the Special is in every case embroidered by each man according to his fancy. The groundwork is in all the same, nor did I find it at all altered from what I formerly saw here. It forms, without any question, the most agreeable side of English life; for there is great freedom, and a banishment of most of the wearisome ceremonies which, with us, tire both host and guest. Notwithstanding this, one finds not less luxury than in the town; this is rendered less burthensome by the custom I mentioned of receiving guests only during a short period of the year, and on invitation.

The ostentation which, doubtless, lies at the root of such customs, we may well forgive, for the better reception it procures us.

Strangers have generally only one room allotted to them, usually a spacious apartment on the first floor. Englishmen seldom go into this room except to sleep, and to dress twice a-day, which, even without company and in the most strictly domestic circle, is always ‘de riguer;’ for all meals are commonly taken in company, and any one who wants to write does it in the library. There, also, those who wish to converse give each other ‘rendezvous,’ to avoid either the whole society, or particular parties, in the formation of which people are quite at liberty. Here you have an opportunity of gossiping for hours with the young ladies, who are always very literarily inclined. Many a marriage is thus concocted or destroyed, between the ‘corpus juris’ on the one side and Bouffler’s Works on the other, while fashionable novels, as a sort of intermediate link, lie on the tables in the middle.

Ten or eleven is the hour for breakfast, at which you may appear in ‘negligÉe.’ It is always of the same kind as that I described to you in the inn, only of course more elegant and complete. The ladies do the honours of the table very agreeably. If you come down later, when the breakfast is removed, a servant brings you what you want. In many houses he is on the watch till one o’clock, or even later, to see that stragglers do not starve. That half-a-dozen newspapers must lie on the table for every one to read who likes, is, of course, understood. The men now either go out hunting or shooting, or on business; the host does the same, without troubling himself in the least degree about his guests (the truest kindness and good breeding;) and about half an hour before dinner the company meet again in the drawing-room in elegant toilette.

The course and order of dinner I have already described to you.

* * * * * * *

England is the true land of contrasts—‘du haut et du bas’ at every step. Thus, even in elegant houses in the country, coachmen and grooms wait at dinner, and are not always free from the odour of the stable. At the second breakfast, the ‘luncheon,’ which is served a few hours after the first, and is generally eaten only by the women (who like to make ‘la petite bouche’ at dinner,) there are no napkins, and altogether less neatness and elegance than at the other meals.

This as parenthesis:—I now return to the ‘order of the day.’ When the men have drunk as much as they wish, they go in search of tea, coffee, and the ladies, and remain for some hours with them, though without mixing much. To-day, for instance, I observed the company was distributed in the following manner. Our suffering host lay on the sofa, dosing a little; five ladies and gentlemen were very attentively reading in various sorts of books (of this number I was one, having some views of parks before me;) another had been playing for a quarter of an hour with a long-suffering dog; two old Members of Parliament were disputing vehemently about the ‘Corn Bill;’ and the rest of the company were in a dimly-lighted room adjoining, where a pretty girl was playing on the piano-forte, and another, with a most perforating voice, singing ballads.

I cannot help remarking here, that Lord and Lady D—— are among the most enlightened, unpretending, and therefore most agreeable, of the people of rank here. He is of the moderate Opposition, and desires the real good of his country, and nothing else; a patriot wholly devoid of egotism,—the noblest title that a cultivated man can bear. She is goodness, cordiality, and unpretendingness itself.

A light supper of cold meats and fruits is brought, at which every one helps himself, and shortly after midnight all retire. A number of small candlesticks stand ready on a side-table; every man takes his own, and lights himself up to bed; for the greater part of the servants, who have to rise early, are, as is fair and reasonable, gone to bed. The eternal sitting of servants in an ante-room is not the custom here; and except at appointed times, when their services are expected, they are little seen, and one waits on oneself.

At night I found a most excellent chintz bed with a canopy. It was so enormously large that I lay like an icicle in it,—for the distant fire was too remote to give any sensible warmth.

February 5th.

Between ourselves be it said, however agreeable, however unconstrained may be one’s abode in another’s house, it is always too constrained, too unaccustomed, above all too dependent for me, proud and fond of ease as I am, ever to feel perfectly at home. This I can be nowhere but within my own walls, and, next to that, in a travelling carriage or an inn. This may not be the best taste in the world, but it is mine. There are so many men who have no taste of their own, at all, that I am delighted with myself for having one, though it be not of the best. I shall therefore not exhaust the term of my invitation, but evacuate my large bed to-morrow, and proceed to Brighton, a watering-place now in great fashion.

I have ridden all over the park here, in company with Lord D——’s very kind and polite son. It is less remarkable for features of striking beauty, than for the absence of all defect. Some views through wooded valleys, of the distant Thames, the town of Gravesend and its rising masts, have however a grand character; but nothing can exceed the incomparable skill with which the walls of wood within the park are planted, in masterly imitation of nature. As a study, I should recommend Cobham, in some respects, more than any of the parks I have described; though in extent and costliness it is surpassed by many. It is very modest, but to the admirer of nature its character is only the more delightful and satisfactory. It has also a great variety of hill, valley, and wood.

I took leave of Lady D—— in her own room; a little sanctuary, furnished with delightful disorder and profusion:—the walls full of small ‘consoles,’ surmounted with mirrors and crowded with choice curiosities; and the floor covered with splendid camellias, in baskets, looking as if they grew there.

Among these flowers, dear Julia, I take my leave of you. I entreat you to send me an answer of equal length, that your conscience may not reproach you with loving me less than I love you.

Your hearty Friend, L——.