LETTER 46.

TO MRS. BYRON.

“Athens, July 25. 1810.

“Dear Mother,

“I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the year.  You northern gentry can have no conception of a Greek summer; which, however, is a perfect frost compared with Malta and Gibraltar, where I reposed myself in the shade last year, after a gentle gallop of four hundred miles, without intermission, through Portugal and Spain.  You see, by my date, that I am at Athens again, a place which I think I prefer, upon the whole, to any I have seen.

“My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may suppose; but none of them verge to England.

“The Marquis of Sligo, my old fellow-collegian, is here, and wishes to accompany me into the Morea.  We shall go together for that purpose.  Lord S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and Lord B., having seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he does next, of which at present he is not quite certain.  Malta is my perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all parts of the habitable globe:—­by the by, I have now been in Asia, Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my time, without hurrying over the most interesting scenes of the ancient world.  F——­, after having been toasted, and roasted, and baked, and grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to philosophise, is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the F——­s, who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite.  He (F——­) begs leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill written and worse spelt letters have never come to hand; as for that matter, there is no great loss in either of our letters, saving and except that I wish you to know we are well, and warm enough at this present writing, God knows.  You must not expect long letters at present, for they are written with the sweat of my brow, I assure you.  It is rather singular that Mr. H——­ has not written a syllable since my departure.  Your letters I have mostly received as well as others; from which I conjecture that the man of law is either angry or busy.