and practices arises from my having been much conversant with ships of war and naval heroes in the year of my voyages in the Mediterranean.  Whitby was in the gallant action off Lissa in 1811.  He was brave, but a disciplinarian.  When he left his frigate, he left a parrot, which was taught by the crew the following sounds—­(it must be remarked that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett the actor, in voice, face, and figure, and that he squinted).

        “The Parrot loquitur.

     “’Whitby!  Whitby! funny eye! funny eye! two dozen, and let you off
     easy.  Oh you ——!’

     “Now, if Madame de B. has a parrot, it had better be taught a
     French parody of the same sounds.

     “With regard to our purposed Journal, I will call it what you
     please, but it should be a newspaper, to make it pay.  We can call
     it ‘The Harp,’ if you like—­or any thing.

“I feel exactly as you do about our ’art[27],’but it comes over me in a kind of rage every now and then, like * * * *, and then, if I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.  As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing, which you describe in your friend, I do not understand it.  I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure.  On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

“I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme—­for I am as serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing.  As to matters here, they are high and mighty—­but not for paper.  It is much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel.  There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them.  Excepting a few occasional murders, (every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,) there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour through Europe.  There is nothing like habit in these things.

     “I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless ’honour comes
     unlocked for,’ we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
     the year.

     “Yours, &c.

     “Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
     open all letters.

“Will you set me right about your curst ’Champs Elysees?’—­are they ‘es’ or ‘ees’ for the adjective?  I know nothing of French, being all Italian.  Though I can read and understand French, I never attempt to speak it; for I hate it.  From the second part of the Memoirs cut what you please.”

[Footnote 26:  Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the “Detached Thoughts:”—­“L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore.  My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,—­Madame de S——­ or H——­, for example.  But I