Evening company I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company, but I assure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get two, or one, to myself.  I am never C.L., but always C.L. & Co.  He who thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself!  I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me.  Once a week, generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the hour I ought always to be a-bed; just close to my bed-room window is the club-room of a public-house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus singers of the two theatres (it must be both of them), begin their orgies.  They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) who, being limited by their talents to the burthen of the song at the play-houses, in revenge have got the common popular airs by Bishop, or some cheap composer, arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all in chorus.  At least, I never can catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on’t.  ’That fury being quench’d’—­the howl I mean—­a burden succeeds of shouts and clapping, and knocking of the table.  At length overtasked nature drops under it, and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent creatures of dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow.  And then I think of the words Christabel’s father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink!) to say every morning by way of variety when he awoke: 

  Every knell, the Baron saith,
  Wakes us up to a world of death—­

or something like it.  All I mean by this senseless interrupted tale, is, that by my central situation I am a little over-companied.  Not that I have any animosity against the good creatures that are so anxious to drive away the harpy solitude from me.  I like ’em, and cards, and a cheerful glass; but I mean merely to give you an idea between office confinement and after-office society, how little time I can call my own.  I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an inference.  I would not that I know of have it otherwise.  I only wish sometimes I could exchange some of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which a late visitation brought most welcome, and carried away, leaving regret, but more pleasure, even a kind of gratitude, at being so often favoured with that kind northern visitation.  My London faces and noises don’t hear me—­I mean no disrespect, or I should explain myself, that instead of their return 220 times a year, and the return of W.W., &c., seven times in 104 weeks, some more equal distribution might be found.  I have scarce room to put in Mary’s kind love, and my poor name ...—­goes on lecturing....  I mean to hear some of the course, but lectures are