Your kind & delightful letter my dear friend was quite a treat--In addition to all its other charms it possessed that best & rarest unexpectedness--I had not even began to think it possible that I should hear yet awhile--Should not have looked out sharp for a franked letter with a great seal dated Plymouth & addressed to Miss M.--for a week to come at least--So you see that being a little lazy as a correspondent sometimes (you say so yourself--So I may say so too) a lot a new zest to your alertness--Suppose I were to take this course, & write only once six weeks or two months--I then surprise you with a letter at the three weeks end. Would you be as delighted to get mine as I was to get yours I wonder would you? Shall I try? Tell me.--First of all let me tell you that Lord Ashburton's letter is not in the slightest danger of being made known through my means--I assure you that no one has seen or heard any part of it except Papa to whom read the original & Mama for whom I made the copy--nor shall I show it to anyone else--I thought I had told you so in my last.--I admire it quite as much as ever & wish as ardently to see the Journal published. In addition to the other sources of pleasure--(In addition again--deuce take it!--very odd that when I once get a beginning to a sentence I can't help beginning all other sentences the same way through a whole letter--as if I had no more words than a parrot! This is a little gentle scolding which I have been giving myself quite aside--you don't hear a word of it you know)--Besides its other excellencies Lord Ashburton's letter gave me the pleasure of hearing that there is in the world another person who is fat--& of seeing & proving that there is another who writes long letters--aye even longer than mine--(Should you have believed that possible my dear Sir William) To me sure there is some difference--his Lordship writes about something--I about nothing--he writes sense--I nonsense--but both are letters & both are long. There is a river [of ink] in both "-- Macedon & Monmouth Quote from Shakespeare's King Henry the Fifth are not more alike.--What a delightful person your Mr. Cranstoun must be! In Peter's written portaits--he has given two much of the peculiarity of Mind & face & person & manner--too much for all the honey of his panegyric to sweeten--They are like reflections in a looking glass in their every day dress--not like the embellished & softened & finely colored portait of Sir Thomas Lawrence--& this which is such a charm to all the leaders, the real charm of the book in my opinion, will be no great delight to the luckless originals. The only persons whom he has shared seem to me to be Mr. Scott & Mr. Cranstoun.--the former from personal affection gap> probably--the latter because he appears to be caricatured in the gentle gap> faultless elegance which can as little be caricatured as a Greek statue.--I agree with you too as to the occasional prosing of our friend Dr. Morris. He does certainly prose--there's no denying it--but does not he make noble amends?--I feel prosing gap> much less than other people--I read with great rapidity--& generally return to parts I like & read them over again before I finish the book--So that in works of unequal merit I have frequently a livelier sense of the good & a less vivid impression of the bad than most readers--this may explain to you why I have sometimes thought more highly of a book than you have done.--It refers of course only to unequally written X The reference is to "" productions--of those which are quite good, or quite bad, or which travel quietly along on one dull unvaried road of respectable commonplace I think pretty much like other people--except that I have a small tendency to prefer at all times the bad to the middling.--From this prosperity it is that instead of talking to you of divers reputable books which I have been reading lately such as --(What a wonderful man that was! What a hero! What a Poet! Did you ever read the lovely verses beginning "My Dear & only love"(?) Quote from Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose or the correspondence of Dr. Franklin (& really those letters which are not merely political not exclusively about the American War on the American peace are admirable for the humour their wisdom--their originality & those sayings which like some of Lord Bacon's are at once so witty & so wise that one scarcely knows whether to call them aphorisms or bon mots.) or (That is a surprising tragedy to be written by Horace Twiss--the plot is absolutely good--I suppose he stole it) or (a very elegant pathetic little tale by the by--printed in Bensley's fairy type on paper not much longer than the leaf of a water lily gap> a fit gift from Oberon to titania--Lord Byron-ish--but not to Lord Byron-ish--Leigh Hunt-ish but not too Leigh Hunt-ish--bold, for he introduces Napolean--not too bold--for he so manages his as to please me & not displease you--) or Bubb Dottington's diary (What a gem of a book that is! What a perfection of impudence!--What simplicity, what good faith, what single mindedness in corruption! Only think of my never having seen it before!) or Clarkson's gap> (That most interesting book on the most interesting subject where I met with your name mentioned in a manner ever to raise my opinion of my kind correspondent & feel prouder than ever of being called gap> his friend--I never knew before that you had taken an active part in the Abolition--still less did I imagine that the admirable idea of the section of a Slave Ship Refering to an image of a cross section of a packed slave ship had originated with you--You must have seen Clarkson's book--Oh that mention of you is true fame! Setting all the interest the subject aside is not the work powerfully written? There are none of the outward marks of fine writing--but there must be the spirit--It laid hold of my mind like a romance--I could not put it down--Could not get it out of my thoughts & my memory.) Instead of gap> talking of these books & others of the same caliber I have selected for the "literary article" of this letter a new novel --by a Maria Regina Roche (there's a name for you!) who has I understand committed other iniquities of the same nature under the title of the & many others which I have been lucky enough not to read. The story of this production as I did not according to my system find it necessary to read any part over again I cannot very clearly pretend to understand--In fact I don't suppose the author herself does--the characters are first Munster Cottage boy--who is a thin old rebel--father to the heroine & never appears on the stage & has the good luck not to be hanged till he is fifty past--thats all I know of him--the hero--whose name is--is--I can't well tell--he goes by four--& I can't well remember which is the real one--only that my impression at the time was that the one Mrs. Roche makes the real one is the only one that cannot belong to him--but I know that the heroine is called Fidelia--the en second Albina (Mrs Maria Regina is as choice & select in the names of her heroines as in her own)--those heroines--particularly the first lose their character fifty times & get turned out of every house they enter--twenty at least--for you are jolted about in the book all over the United Kingdoms to my great disquiet who am lazy in my reading & love a heroine to stay in one place --& after a variety of possible incidents, such as the hero's fighting a duel with his father & other prettiness of the sort, get married & so the book ends.--Only imagine that this precious production was seriously recommended to me as an excellent novel by a very clever & literary person!--Before I have quite done with books I must got back for a moment to Peter's letters--They are said to be a joint production Mr. Lockhart a young Advocate in Edinburgh & Mr. John Wilson the dismal Poet of the city of the Plague--this is disagreeable to my imagination--because you know John Wilson and James Hogg are the two most attractive persons in the book, & though of course Mr. L. wrote the passages about Mr. W. yet still you know common decency should have kept the joint Author under a little. By the way these three--Messrs. Wilson, Lockhart, & Hogg are the chief writers of that delightful--good-for-nothing--,--a work where there are more lies & more wit than in any other publication in Christendom.--perhaps "wit" is not quite the word I should have said humour. Do you see ? You would like it out & out--for you have not my partiality for the "Cockney School of Poetry & Painting". As to Mr. Allan I never heard of him in my life--& I don't suppose Dr. Morris does know much of painting--though he conciliated my favour on this score by his vivid & eloquent admiration of a picture which I think of as often as I think of beauty--that unforgettable picture the .--One thing that contributes to the heaviness of Peter's letters (the occasional heaviness I mean--I won't admit an inch more) is the unwieldy length of the sentences--& as you say a disproportion of importance between the words & the ideas--the sense & the sound---a sort of grandiloquence the very reverse of good taste." This fault is not common nowadays--for style seems to me generally speaking very sharp & pointed--angular & full of little turns like Mr. Hazlitt's. By the by I never hear you talk of Hazlitt--Did you never read any of gap> his works? Never read the ? ? ? or the ?--the ers give him a bad character--but that merely regards politics--& politics ought not to weigh in works of general literature--I am sure you would like them--they are so exquisitely entertaining--so original--so free from every sort of gap> critical shackle--the style is so delightfully piquant--so sparkling--so glittering. so tasteful--so condensed--the images & illustrations come in such rich & graceful--profusion that one seems like where the leaves were emeralds, the flowers sapphires, & the fruit topazes & rubies. Do read some of the --you will not agree with half Mr. Hazlitt's opinions--neither do I--but you will be very much entertained--every now & then two or three pages together are really like series of epigrams--particularly in the lecture on there is a character of your friend Mr. Wordsworth which will enchant you. Now for a jerk--Oh by the way one of your jerks was so mystical that I could not possibly make it out--it puzzled me half the morning--the jerk was not an accidental jerk either--do you remember the one I mean? If you do send me the key to the jerk. Of course I do not mean the plan of the garden which seems to me excellent.--Your jerks are growing so much into pictures that we must have them represented by woodcuts when your letters are published--the next time you are at a loss for a device send me a little jerk of the house at Bickham as well as the garden. These jerks are a very important & delightful part of your letters--a grace gap> epistolary which I leave wholly & you contenting myself with a simple scroll like nothing on earth but the hieroglyphics which one sometimes sees on the outsides of franks. Admire the address with which without any jerk at all I have steered round to Mr. Palmer--Whom I mean to frank this letter if I can catch him--think I have told you that Mama knows a little of Lady Madelina--Papa something more--& I nothing at all. I have never seen her but I hear she is a very agreeable entertaining woman with more of the cleverness the impudence & the good humor of her match making Mother than any other of the family.--I don't think you will see Mr. Palmer in Devonshire this Spring because he is as constant in attending the House as the Speaker himself. If you do see him you will like him--he is a perfect gentleman--plain, unaffected, & well informed, though he has fits of silence, which together with his height, his elegance, his ugliness & his M.P.ship have occasioned a report that gap> He is the real living undoubted original of the Ourang Outang member of Parliament in a report which I, who have once heard him speak & often he aring him talk & very agreeable too, can testify to be false & mal icious Here a jerk is drawn out as an imitation Is your fog cleared away yet? We have just got a fall of snow --very disagreeable--shuts me up--& I had been enjoying so much this lovely clear winter weather trotting about in the plantations picking up the fir cones & feeding the robins who used to come to me & take the bread almost from my hand--not quite--but as nearly as possible--I have seen one catch it between my hand & the ground. All that can be enjoyed indoors of this sweet intimacy & confidence with these beautiful innocent creatures I do enjoy, by having had constantly all the winter a board at the parlour window with bread crumbs on it from which not merely my redbreasts but a great many other birds are supplied--I wonder that this cheap & innocent pleasure is not commoner--birds in a cage make one melancholy--but to feed them & make them love one when at liberty--to conquer their mistrust & tame their shyness is delightful.--All this is "silly sooth"--I will redeem its insipidity by a most curious report by which a correspondent of mine Miss Nooth who is as present living in the first circles in Paris sent me yesterday. She says that the "monsters" who have gone out there lately stabbing women with small daggers are supposed to be employed by a greater Power to inoculate for the Plague!!!--After this Wonderful Wonder of Wonders--I will add nothing but a request to you to persevere in your excellent plan of answering my letters very speedily. Write soon my dear Sir William I beseech you--& tell us that Mr. Elford is recovered you did not mention him in your last.--Mama is come back from Winchester & joins Papa in kindest regards & good wishes.--

Ever my dear kind friend most sincerely & affectionately your's

& is an ampersand