I hope and trust that we are all to meet next year!  We were delighted with our drive from Chepstow to Ross—­the Wye scenery is exquisitely beautiful; we exhausted ourselves and our epithets in exclamations, and the day seemed made for the magnificent view from the Wynd Cliff, and then we came to Tintern Abbey!  How often we wished for our Chedder party—­how often we talked over the pleasure we would have in admiring all this beauty with them, and how often, like spoiled children, we wondered why all this enjoyment should not have accompanied us to Monmouth! but good-night, my very dear friends—­I shall leave the letter in better hands for finishing, I am so sleepy!!

[Mr. Ramsay]—­We have seen many things of which the ingenious and very learned Dr. Woodward would say that they were “great ornaments to our ponds and ditches.”  But of this enough, and more than enough.  Allow me to take this opportunity of expressing my satisfaction at finding how completely Mrs. E.B.R enters into the friendship which has so long existed between us, and at seeing how fully prepared she is to appreciate your kindness to myself and her; in short, to find that she loves you all now, as if she had known you as long as I have.  May we never lose sight of these feelings!  We saw Oxford to-day—­a good thing, but in detail not equal to Cambridge—­in general effect far superior.  Gloster pleased me:  the tower and cloisters surpassingly fine.  People do not roar enough about the steeple of St. Mary’s, Oxford—­it is the finest in England, superior I think to that of Salisbury.  Are you aware that there is a modern church at Oxford in the pure Norman style?  My visit to Frome has given me (except in parting) unmixed satisfaction.  I cannot say how much I have been gratified, and with what pleasure I look forward to a renewal.  I must to bed, my eyes cannot discern the place to write in, and I am sleepy.  Adieu, dearest friends, one and all at the Field of Frome, the Hill of Styles, the cottage of Keyford, etc.  I rejoice to think that my good friend Kay is safe.  Good-night!  Woburn looks well—­“a great ornament,” etc.

     Marked by Mrs. Clerk—­“Written on their way from F.F.—­first
     visit.”

     Mr. RAMSAY to Miss BYARD, Fromefield, Frome, Somerset.

     Edinburgh, Dec. 17, 1831,

My dearest Friend, They have told me that you are not well, and neither time nor distance can take away the feeling of regard and friendship with which I sympathise with all that occurs to you.  I confess myself that I was some time since disposed to look on all things around me with an anxious aspect; but I am beginning to see in all events but a part of that dispensation which is so gloriously distinguished as the work of love, and I think that public calamity or private sorrow, sickness, pain, weariness and weakness, may all be translated into the