To confess an honest truth, a Pig is one of those things I could never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, snipes, barn-door fowls, ducks, geese, your tame villatic things--Welsh mutton--collars of brawn--sturgeon, fresh and pickled--your potted char--Swiss cheeses--French pies--early grapes--muscadines,--I impart as freely to my friends as to myself,--they are but _self_-extended; but pardon me if I stop somewhere--_where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity; there my friends_ (or any good man) _may command me_; but pigs are pigs; and I myself am therein nearest to myself; nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature, who bestowed such a boon upon me, if, in a churlish mood, I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt of remorse was when a child--my kind old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man--not a mendicant--but thereabouts; a _look-beggar_--not a verbal petitionist--and, in the coxcombry of taught charity, I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little _in all the pride of an evangelical peacock_, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me--_the sum it was to her_--_the pleasure that she had a right to expect that I, not the old impostor, should take in eating her cake_--the damned ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like. And I was right; it was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill, with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a Pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. Yours (short of Pig) to command in everything, C. L. LETTER 202. TO ALLSOP April 18th, 1822. My dearest Friend,