You will, ere this, my dear Mrs. Jameson, have received my very tardy reply to your first kind letter.  I got your second last night at the theater, just after I had given away my jewels to Mr. Beverley.  I was much gratified by your profession of affection for me, for though I am not over-desirous of public admiration and approbation, I am anxious to secure the good-will of individuals whose intellect I admire, and on whose character I can with confidence rely.  Your letter, however, made me uncomfortable in some respects; you seem unhappy and perplexed.  I am sure you will believe me when I say that, without the remotest thought of intruding on the sacredness of private annoyances and distresses, I most sincerely sympathize in your uneasiness, whatever may be its cause, and earnestly pray that the cloud, which the two or three last times we met in London hung so heavily on your spirits, may pass away.  It is not for me to say to you, “Patience,” my dear Mrs. Jameson; you have suffered too much to have neglected that only remedy of our afflictions, but I trust Heaven will make it an efficacious one to you, and erelong send you less need of it.  I am glad you see my mother often, and very glad that to assist your recollection of me you find interest and amusement in discussing the fitting up of my room with her.  Pray do not forget that the drawing you made of the rooms in James Street is mine, and that when you visit me in my new abode it will be pleasant to have that remembrance before us of a place where we have spent some hours very happily together.

What you say of Mrs. N——­ only echoes my own thoughts of her.  She is a splendid creature, nobly endowed every way; too nobly to become through mere frivolity and foolish vanity the mark of the malice and envy of such things as she is surrounded by, and who will all eagerly embrace the opportunity of slandering one so immeasurably their superior in every respect.  I do not know much of her, but I feel deeply interested in her; not precisely with the interest inspired by loving or even liking, but with that feeling of admiring solicitude with which one must regard a person so gifted, so tempted, and in such a position as hers.  I am glad that lovely sister of hers is married, though matrimony in that world is not always the securest haven for a woman’s virtue or happiness; it is sometimes in that society the reverse of an “honorable estate.”

The poor king’s death gave me a holiday on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we eagerly embraced the opportunity its respite afforded us of visiting Loch Lomond and the entrance to Loch Long.  As almost my first thought when we reached the lake was, “How can people attempt to describe such places?” I shall not terminate my letter with “smooth expanses of sapphire-tinted waves,” or “purple screens of heath-clad hills rising one above another into the cloudless sky.”  A volume might be written on the mere color of the water,