or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble station.  There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend.  I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for your diversion.  William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel’s maid.  But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me must become history to you; which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for reading.  No person, under a diviner, can with any prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm’s length.  Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect; the epoch of the writer (Habbakuk) falling in with the true present time of the receiver (Daniel); but then we are no prophets.

Then as to sentiment.  It fares little better with that.  This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot; or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself.  If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats.  I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically and invitingly over a stream—­was it?—­or a rock?—­no matter—­but the stillness and the repose, after a weary journey ’tis likely, in a languid moment of his lordship’s hot restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones in.  This was all very natural and excusable as a sentiment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light.  But when from a passing sentiment it came to be an act; and when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all that way from England; who was there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon?  Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship.  Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians—­a thing of its delicate texture—­the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring.  Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark