This is a heavy air; nobody eats with appetite, and many are ill with colds.

We shall be home on Saturday; and, indeed, my sweet Emma, I shall be most happy to see you.

To-morrow, we go to a mountain; but no great expectation of sport.

Your’s, ever, my dear wife,

  W.H.

XV.

  Persano, Wednesday,
  [Jan. 18th, 1792.]

It was not your white and silver, alone, that made you look like an angel, at the Academy.  Suppose you had put it on nine parts out of ten of the ladies in company, would any one have appeared angelic?

I will allow, however, that a beautiful woman, feeling herself well dressed, will have a sort of confidence, which will add greatly to the lustre of her eye:  but take my word, that, for some years to come, the more simply you dress, the more conspicuous will be your beauty; which, according to my idea, is the most perfect I have yet met with, take it all in all.

It is long-faced day with the King.  We went far; the weather was bad; and, after all, met with little or no game:  I did not fire off my gun.

Yesterday, when we brought home all we killed, it filled the house, completely; and, to-day, they are obliged to white-wash the walls, to take away the blood.  There were more than four hundred; boars, deer, stags, and all.

To-morrow, we are to have another slaughter; and not a word of reason or common sense do I meet with, the whole day, till I retire to my volumes of the old Gentleman’s Magazine, which just keeps my mind from starving.

Except to-day, on a mountain, I have never felt the least appetite; there, I eat the wings of a cold chicken with pleasure.

Hamilton is delighted with your civilities.  He has wrote me a long letter.  I do not mean to keep pace with him in writing; so, send him a line or two, only, in answer.

I do not recollect the name of Marino Soolania; and, if I received a letter from him, it was in the hurry of my arrival, and is lost:  so that Smith may desire the Dutch Consul to desire him to write again, and I will answer.

I always rejoice when I find you do not neglect your singing.  I am, I own, ambitious of producing something extraordinary in you, and it is nearly done.

Adieu! my sweet Em.  I rejoice that the time of our re-union is so near—­Saturday night!

  W.H.

XVI.

  Venasso, Friday,
  27th January 1794.

MY DEAR EM.

By having grumbled a little, I got a better post to-day; and have killed two boars and a sow, all enormous.  I have missed but two shot since I came here; and, to be sure, when the post is good, it is noble shooting!  The rocks, and mountains, as wild as the boars.

The news you sent me, of poor Lord Pembroke, gave me a little twist; but I have, for some time, perceived, that my friends, with whom I spent my younger days, have been dropping around me.