Friday night --My letters always grow like snowballs when they have time to gather--Not a single member of the Lords or Commons was at our Music meeting today--the wiser they! I shall have a better opinion of the Legislature as long as I live. Pray do you like Music Meetings? I never come from one without being very sure that I have no music in my soul--I am always tired to death--stupified--stultified--fit for nothing but to vent my stupidityweariness on some luckless Correspondent such as you my dear Sir William. Not but music that "Medicine of the mind" Possibly a reference to Antoine Le Camus's , sometimes translated as "Medicine of the Mind" (Paris, first edition, 1753). , as somebody called it, is a very fine thing taken in small & distant doses--but a whole Oratorio--a four hours portion.--Good Lord it is pouring a whole Apothecary's shop down one's throat. Nevertheless I had my amusements. To say nothing of the feminine diversion of dress-scanning--staring at Pelisses & bonnets--I happened to be in an entertaining neighborhood. A man close behind me took the for Italian Here, Mitford points out the humor in the pair mistaking the well-known church Latin of the hymn for Italian.--& a "Miss Matilda"Likely not a reference to a specific young woman named Matilda; during Mitford's time, "Matilda" was becoming proverbial for silly and romantic young women, since the name was associated with the heroines of several Gothic novels as well as the poetic pseudonyms of women authors such as Charlotte Dacre ("Rosa Matilda") and Hannah Cowley ("Anna Matilda"). of his party to do him the favor to translate it for him--Miss Matilda did not deny its being Italian nor disclaim the knowledge he imputed to her, but she said "she could not quite make it out--she thought it must be misprinted--she would try when she got home." This is quite true I assure you--& I was so well bred that I did not laugh.--Another of my recreations was comparing the actual noise with a Theory of Mr. Dickinson's who maintains that all sounds of Art & Nature are reducible to a musical scale--& really when one listens to a great Chorus--analyzing & taking it to pieces--it does seem as if composed of grander & more various Sounds than mere music though our Choruses to day were not half full enough. By the bye I puzzled my Theorist the other day--for half a minute I fairly posed him. He was haranguing very triumphantly about this universal musical scale of his when I put the before him for a text & begged him to begin with arranging that according to his new System--he was really disconcerted for an instant--but nothing can put him longout of his way--He flew off at a Tangent to Hogarth & gave such a character of him--with such eloquence such discrimination such delightful & unwearying lightness & tact that it was worth even the bodily fatigue of an Oratorio to her it. He really is a first rate man--I should like you to know him.--There is a concert & Ball at Reading tonight--& people are expecting the Duke of Wellington. Now there is likewise a ball at Basingstoke where he is also expected tonight--Nowthe probable end is that he will go to neither--Good bye--God bless you!--This letter must go for two or three mind--& you must write to me directly--do you hear my dear Sir William? Directly.