invalid.  Here I am, going a long and curious tour without ability to walk a quarter of a mile; quere, what hope of recovery?  I think and think in vain, when attempting to trace the progress of this disease and so gradually has my health declined, that I believe it has been acting upon me for ten years, gradually diminishing my strength.  My mental faculties may perhaps recover; my bodily strength cannot return unless climate has an effect on the human frame which I cannot possibly believe or comprehend.  The safe resolution is, to try no foolish experiments, but make myself as easy as I can, without suffering myself to be vexed about what I cannot help.  If I sit on the deck and look at Vesuvius, it will be all I ought to think of.

Having mentioned John the Painter, I may add that it was in this town of Portsmouth that the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to death by Felton, a fanatic of the same kind with the Incendiary, though perpetrator of a more manly crime.  This monster-breeding age can afford both Feltons and John Aitkens in abundance.  Every village supplies them, while in fact a deep feeling of the coarsest selfishness furnishes the ruling motive, instead of an affectation of public spirit—­that hackneyed affectation of patriotism, as like the reality as a Birmingham halfpenny to a guinea.

The girls, I regret to see, have got a senseless custom of talking politics in all weathers and in all sorts of company.  This can do no good, and may give much offence.  Silence can offend no one, and there are pleasanter or less irritating subjects to talk of.  I gave them both a hint of this, and bid them both remember they were among ordinary strangers.  How little young people reflect what they may win or lose by a smart reflection imprudently fired off at a venture!

Mr. Barrow of the Admiralty came and told us the whole fleet, Barham excepted, were ordered to the North Sea to help to bully the King of Holland, and that Captain Pigot, whose motions are of more importance to us than those of the whole British Navy, sails, as certainly as these things can be prophesied, on Thursday, 27th October.

October 26.—­Here we still are, fixed by the inexorable wind.  Yesterday we asked a few old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, and two or three others, to tea and talk.  I engaged in a new novel, by Mr. Smith,[480] called New Forest.  It is written in an old style, calculated to meet the popular ideas—­somewhat like “Man as he is not"[481] and that class.  The author’s opinions seem rather to sit loose upon him and to be adopted for the nonce and not very well brought out.  His idea of a hero is an American philosopher with all the affected virtues of a Republican which no man believes in.