DEAR ERNEST—I cannot acknowledge surprise at the contents of your last letter, having always looked for some such ending to your colonial adventure. The day of success for such enterprises has gone by—if indeed _any one_ ever was really successful at any time in such wanderings and Quixotisms. You quote the greater examples. Yet a little temporary notoriety, chiefly ending in imprisonment or the block, was the guerdon of Columbus and one Raleigh, instances which occur to me. As I have said before, I have no doubt that our family would have substantially benefited by remaining on their paternal fiords and leaving Normandy and England to the robbers and hangers-on who followed the popular pirate of the day. Being in England, I suppose we shall have to stay, though the climate daily recommends itself less to any one whose epidermis does not resemble a suit of armour. The crops have been bad this year. The tenants are slow and deficient. No one seems to have any money except certain Liverpool or Manchester persons, born with an aptitude for swindling in ‘gray shirtings,’ cotton twist, racehorses, or other equally plausible instrument for gambling. I spend little and risk nothing. So I may hope to survive in my insignificance, unless the grand Radical earthquake, which will surely swallow England’s aristocracy of birth and culture in a coming day, be antedated. All men of family who dabble in agriculture, commerce, or colonisation, are earthen pots which must inevitably be shattered by the aggressive flotilla of brazen vessels which encumbers every tide nowadays. You will admit I had no expectation of other result than your ruin when you embarked. In announcing that fact spare me the details. You will find your old rooms ready at Neuchampstead, and refurnished. I have been extravagant in some curious antique furniture. I enclose a draft for three thousand pounds. Such a sum is of no use to a gentleman in England. Fling it after the rest. It may console you, years hence, when you are adding Australian pollen masses to the famous collection of orchids for which _alone_ Neuchampstead is celebrated, that your experiment had full justice. It is only the bourgeois who leaves the table before his ‘system’ is fairly tried.—Good-bye, my dear brother. Yours sincerely, COURTENAY NEUCHAMP. _P.S._—I forgot to add that I gave Augusta your message. How could you be so incautious? I would have suppressed it, but had, of course, no option. She starts for Sydney by the mail steamer. Are the women in Australia so obstinate? But they are much the same everywhere, I apprehend.—C. N.