Very dear friend,—­What are you doing?  How are your people, your country, your art? you are unjustly severe upon me, for you know my infirmity in the matter of letter-writing.  I have thought of you much, and on reading the other day that there was a disturbance at Heidelberg, I tried some thirty rough draughts [brouillons] in order to send you a line, the end of them all being to be thrown into the fire.  This page will perhaps reach you and find you happy with your good mother.  Since I had news from you, I have been in Scotland, in this beautiful country of Walter Scott, with so many memories of Mary Stuart, the two Charleses, &c.  I drag myself from one lord to another, from one duke to another.  I find everywhere, besides extreme kindness and hospitality without limit, excellent pianos, beautiful pictures, choice libraries; there are also hunts, horses, dogs, interminable dinners, and cellars of which I avail myself less.  It is impossible to form an idea of all the elaborate comfort which reigns in the English mansions.  The Queen having passed this year some weeks in Scotland, all England followed her, partly out of courtesy, partly because of the impossibility of going to the disturbed Continent.  Everything here has become doubly splendid, except the sun, which has done nothing more than usual; moreover, the winter advances, and I do not know yet what will become of me.  I am writing to you from Lord Torphichen’s.  In this mansion, above my apartment, John Knox, the Scotch reformer, dispensed for the first time the Sacrament.  Everything here furnishes matter for the imagination—­a park with hundred-year-old trees, precipices, walls of the castle in ruins, endless passages with numberless old ancestors—­there is even a certain Red-cowl which walks there at midnight.  I walk there my incertitude. [II y a meme un certain bonnet rouge, qui s’y promene a minuit.  J’y promene mon incertitude.]

Cholera is coming; there is fog and spleen in London, and no president in Paris.  It does not matter where I go to cough and suffocate, I shall always love you.  Present my respects to your mother, and all my wishes for the happiness of you all.  Write me a line to the address:  Dr. Lishinsky, [footnote:  The letter I shall next place before the reader is addressed by Chopin to “Dr. Lishinski.”  In an Edinburgh medical directory the name appeared as Lyszynski.] 10, Warriston Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland.—­Yours, with all my heart,

  Chopin.

P.S.—­I have played in Edinburgh; the nobility of the neighbourhood came to hear me; people say the thing went off well—­a little success and money.  There were this year in Scotland Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, Salvi—­everybody.

From Chopin’s letters may be gathered that he arrived once more in London at the end of October or beginning of November.

Chopin to Dr. Lyschinski; London, November 3, 1848:—­