Here I end my letter; a great deal too long already for so busy a man to write, and for such careless correspondents to receive.

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London:  July 6, 1832.

 Be you Foxes, be you Pitts,
 You must write to silly chits. 
 Be you Tories, be you Whigs,
 You must write to sad young gigs. 
 On whatever board you are—­
 Treasury, Admiralty, War,
 Customs, Stamps, Excise, Control;—­
 Write you must, upon my soul.

So sings the judicious poet; and here I sit in my parlour, looking out on the Thames, and divided, like Garrick in Sir Joshua’s picture, between Tragedy and Comedy; a letter to you, and a bundle of papers about Hydrabad, and the firm of Palmer and Co., late bankers to the Nizam.

Poor Sir Walter Scott is going back to Scotland by sea tomorrow.  All hope is over; and he has a restless wish to die at home.  He is many thousand pounds worse than nothing.  Last week he was thought to be so near his end that some people went, I understand, to sound Lord Althorp about a public funeral.  Lord Althorp said, very like himself, that if public money was to be laid out, it would be better to give it to the family than to spend it in one day’s show.  The family, however, are said to be not ill off.

I am delighted to hear of your proposed tour, but not so well pleased to be told that you expect to be bad correspondents during your stay at Welsh inns.  Take pens and ink with you, if you think that you shall find none at the Bard’s Head, or the Glendower Arms.  But it will be too bad if you send me no letters during a tour which will furnish so many subjects.  Why not keep a journal, and minute down in it all that you see and hear? and remember that I charge you, as the venerable circle charged Miss Byron, to tell me of every person who “regards you with an eye of partiality.”

What can I say more? as the Indians end their letters.  Did not Lady Holland tell me of some good novels?  I remember:—­Henry Masterton, three volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination.  Smuggle it in, next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed in drab; and read it together at the curling hour.

My article on Mirabeau will be out in the forthcoming number.  I am not a good judge of my own compositions, I fear; but I think that it will be popular.  A Yankee has written to me to say that an edition of my works is about to be published in America with my life prefixed, and that he shall be obliged to me to tell him when I was born, whom I married, and so forth.  I guess I must answer him slick right away.  For, as the judicious poet observes,

 Though a New England man lolls back in his chair,
 With a pipe in his mouth, and his legs in the air,
 Yet surely an Old England man such as I
 To a kinsman by blood should be civil and spry.