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    December 5.

Since my former dates, I do not know that I have much to add on the subject, and, luckily, nothing to take away; for I am more pleased than ever with my Venetian, and begin to feel very serious on that point—­so much so, that I shall be silent.

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By way of divertisement, I am studying daily, at an Armenian monastery, the Armenian language.  I found that my mind wanted something craggy to break upon; and this—­as the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement—­I have chosen, to torture me into attention.  It is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it.  I try, and shall go on;—­but I answer for nothing, least of all for my intentions or my success.  There are some very curious MSS. in the monastery, as well as books; translations also from Greek originals, now lost, and from Persian and Syriac, &c.; besides works of their own people.  Four years ago the French instituted an Armenian professorship.  Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry.  They persevered with a courage worthy of the nation and of universal conquest, till Thursday; when fifteen of the twenty succumbed to the six and twentieth letter of the alphabet.  It is, to be sure, a Waterloo of an Alphabet—­that must be said for them.  But it is so like these fellows, to do by it as they did by their sovereigns—­abandon both; to parody the old rhymes, “Take a thing and give a thing”—­“Take a king and give a king.  They are the worst of animals, except their conquerors.

I hear that that H——­n is your neighbour, having a living in Derbyshire.  You will find him an excellent hearted fellow, as well as one of the cleverest; a little, perhaps, too much japanned by preferment in the church and the tuition of youth, as well as inoculated with the disease of domestic felicity, besides being overrun with fine feelings about women and constancy (that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal;) but, otherwise, a very worthy man, who has lately got a pretty wife, and (I suppose) a child by this time.  Pray remember me to him, and say that I know not which to envy most—­his neighbourhood, him, or you.

Of Venice I shall say little.  You must have seen many descriptions; and they and they are most of them like.  It is a poetical place; and classical, to us, from Shakspeare and Otway.  I have not yet sinned against it in verse, nor do I know that I shall do so, having been tuneless since I crossed the Alps, and feeling, as yet, no renewal of the “estro.”  By the way, I suppose you have seen “Glenarvon.”  Madame de Stael lent it me to read from Copet last autumn.  It seems to me that, if the authoress had written the truth, and nothing but the truth—­the whole truth—­the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining.  As for the likeness, the picture can’t be good—­I did not sit long enough.  When you have leisure, let me hear from and of you, believing me ever and truly yours most affectionately.