“I am not well versed enough in the ways of single woman to make
     much matrimonial progress.

“I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley for this last week.  My head aches with the vintage of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as their dregs.  I met your friends the D * * s:—­she sung one of your best songs so well, that, but for the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; he reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more musical in soul, perhaps.  I wish to God he may conquer his horrible anomalous complaint.  The upper part of her face is beautiful, and she seems much attached to her husband.  He is right, nevertheless, in leaving this nauseous town.  The first winter would infallibly destroy her complexion,—­and the second, very probably, every thing else.

“I must tell you a story.  M * * (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the P——­e’s coldness to his old wassailers.  D * * (a learned Jew) bored him with questions—­why this? and why that?  ’Why did the P——­e act thus?’—­’Why, sir, on account of Lord * *, who ought to be ashamed of himself.’—­’And why ought Lord * * to be ashamed of himself?’—­’Because the P——­e, sir, * * * * * * * *.’—­’And why, sir, did the P——­e cut you?’—­’ Because, G——­d d——­mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.’—­’And why did you stick to your principles?’

“Is not this last question the best that was ever put, when you consider to whom?  It nearly killed M * *.  Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as Goldsmith said about the peas, it was a very good joke when I heard it—­as I did from an ear-witness—­and is only spoilt in my narration.

“The season has closed with a dandy ball;—­but I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and Frere and Mackintosh, where I shall drink your health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence till ‘too much canaries’ wash away my memory, or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the opposite side of the table.  Canning has disbanded his party by a speech from his * * * *—­the true throne of a Tory.  Conceive his turning them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them think for themselves.  ’I have led my ragamuffins where they are well peppered.  There are but three of the 150 left alive, and they are for the Towns-end (query, might not Falstaff mean the Bow Street officer?  I dare say Malone’s posthumous edition will have it so) for life.’

“Since I wrote last, I have been into the country.  I journeyed by night—­no incident, or accident, but an alarm on the part of my valet on the outside, who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a glow-worm in the second figure of number XIX—­mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern.  I can only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it necessary