coat....  Southey tells me that he has known his lady more than twenty years, that the disproportion of their ages is rational, and that having only one daughter left, his necessary absences would be irksome to her.  Whatever he does, is done wisely and virtuously.  As for Rogers, almost an octogenarian, be it on his own head!  A dry nettle tied to a rose-bud, just enough life in it to sting, and that’s all Lady Blessington would be delighted at any fresh contribution from Miss Garrow.  Let it be sent to her at Gore House.  I go there to-morrow for ten days, then into Warwickshire, then to Southampton.  But I have not given up all hope of another jaunt to Torquay.  Best compliments to the ladies.

“Yours ever,

“W.S.L.”

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The following is dated the 15th of November, 1837—­just half a century ago!

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“35, ST. JAMES’S SQUARE, BATH.

“I should be very ungrateful if I did not often think of you.  But among my negligences, I must regret that I did not carry away with me the address of our friend Bezzi.” [A Piedmontese refugee who was a very intimate friend of Garrow’s.  I knew him in long subsequent years, when political changes had made it possible for him to return to Italy.  He was a very clever and singularly brilliant man, whose name, I think, became known to the English public in connection with the discovery of the celebrated portrait of Dante on a long whitewashed wall of the Bargello, in Florence.  There was some little jealousy about the discovery between him and Kirkup.  The truth was that Kirkup’s large and curious antiquarian knowledge led him to feel sure that the picture must be there, under the whitewash; while Bezzi’s influence with the authorities succeeded in getting the wall cleared of its covering.] “I am anxious to hear how he endures his absence from Torquay, and I will write to him the moment I hear of him.  Tell Miss Garrow that the muses like the rustle of dry leaves almost as well as the whispers of green ones.  If she doubts it, entreat her on my part to ask the question of them.  Nothing in Bath is vastly interesting to me now.  Two or three persons have come up and spoken to me whom I have not seen for a quarter of a century.  Of these faces I recollect but one, and it was the ugliest!  By the same token—­but here the figure of aposiopesis is advantageous to me—­old Madam Burridge, of my lodgings, has sent me three large forks and one small, which I left behind.  She forgot to send another of each.  What is worse, I left behind me a three-faced seal, which I think I once showed you.  It was enclosed in a black rough case.  This being of the time of Henry the Eighth, and containing the arms of my family connections, I value far above a few forks, or a few dozens.  It cannot be worth sixpence to whoever has it.  One of the engravings was a greyhound with an arrow through him, a crest of my grandmother’s, whose maiden name was Noble.  If you pass by, pray ask about it—­not that I am ever disappointed at the worst result of an inquiry.  I am afraid the ladies of your house will think me imprudent; and what must be their opinion, if you let it transpire that I have furthermore invested a part of my scrip in the beaver trade.  Offer my best regards to them all, and believe me,