I address from the Rectory (Vicarageit ought to be) of Crabbe, the “Radiator,” whose mind is now greatly exercised with Dr. Whewell’s “Plurality of Worlds.”  Crabbe, who is a good deal in the secrets of Providence, admires the work beyond measure, but most indignantly rejects the doctrine as unworthy of God.  I have not read the book, contented to hear Crabbe’s commentaries.  I have been staying with him off and on for two months, and, as I say, give his address because any letter thither directed will find me sooner or later in my little wanderings.  I am at present staying with a farmer in a very pleasant house near Woodbridge, inhabiting such a room as even you, I think, would sleep composedly in; my host a taciturn, cautious, honest, active man whom I have known all my life.  He and his wife, a capital housewife, and his son, who would carry me on his shoulders to Ipswich, and a maid-servant, who, as she curtsies of a morning, lets fall the teapot, etc., constitute the household.  Farming greatly prospers, farming materials fetching an exorbitant price at the Michaelmas auctions—­all in defiance of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who got returned for Suffolk on the strength of denouncing Corn Law Repeal as the ruin of the country.  He has bought a fine house near Ipswich, with great gilded gates before it, and, by dint of good dinners and soft sawder, finally draws the country gentry to him....

Please to look at the September Number of Fraser’s Magazine, where there are some prose translations of Hafiz by Cowell which may interest you a little.  I think Cowell (as he is apt to do) gives Hafiz rather too much credit for a mystical wine-cup, and cup-bearer; I mean, taking him on the whole.  The few odes he quotes have certainly a deep and pious feeling, such as the Man of Mirth will feel at times:  none perhaps more strongly.

Some one by chance read out to me the other day at the seaside your account of poor old Naseby village from “Cromwell,” quoted in Knight’s “Half-Hours,” etc.  It is now twelve years ago, at this very season, I was ransacking for you; you promising to come down, and never coming.  I hope very much you are soon going to give us something:  else Jerrold and Tupper carry all before them.

TO “LYDIA LANGUISH” [Sidenote:  Austin Dobson]

    “Il me faut des emotions”—­Blanche Amory

  You ask me, Lydia, “whether I,
    If you refuse my suit, shall die.” 
  (Now pray don’t let this hurt you!)
  Although the time be out of joint,
  I should not think a bodkin’s point
     The sole resource of virtue;
  Nor shall I, though your mood endure,
  Attempt a final Water-cure
    Except against my wishes;
  For I respectfully decline
  To dignify the Serpentine,
  And make hors-d’oeuvres for fishes;
  But if you ask me whether I
    Composedly can go,
  Without a look, without a sigh,
    Why, then I answer—­No.