I still recollect the unlucky hit I made on my arrival in London, when, anxious beyond measure to catch every idiomatic expression, and reading the huge inscription of the Cannon Brewery at Knightsbridge, as the building had some resemblance to the great cannon-foundry in this town, I settled it in my mind that the genuine English idiom, for what I should now call _casting_, was no other than _brewing_ cannon. This, however, was a mere verbal mistake. Not so that which I made when the word _nursery_ stared me in the face every five minutes, as in a fine afternoon I approached your great metropolis, on the western road. Luxury and wealth, said I to myself, in a strain approaching to philosophic indignation, have at last blunted the best feelings of nature among the English. Surely, if I am to judge from this endless string of _nurseries_, the English ladies have gone a step beyond the unnatural practice of devolving their first maternal duties upon domestic hirelings. Here, it seems, the poor helpless infants are sent to be kept and suckled in crowds, in a decent kind of _Foundling-Hospitals_. You may easily guess that I knew but one signification of the words _nursing_ and _nursery_. Fortunately I was not collecting materials for a book of travels during a summer excursion, otherwise I should now be enjoying all the honour of the originality of my remarks on the customs and manners of Old England. From similar mistakes I think myself safe enough in speaking of my native country; but I wish I could feel equal confidence as to the execution of the sketches you desire to obtain from me. I know you too well to doubt that my letters will, by some chance or other, find their way to some of the London Magazines, before they have been long in your hands. And only think, I intreat you, how I shall fret and fidget under the apprehension that some of your pert newspaper writers may raise a laugh against me in some of those _Suns_ or _Stars_, which, in spite of intervening seas and mountains, can dart a baneful influence, and blast the character of infallibility, as an English scholar, which I have acquired since my return to Spain. I have so strongly rivetted the admiration of the Irish merchants in this place, that, in spite of their objection to my not calling tea _ta_, they submit to my decision every intricate question about your provoking _shall_ and _will_: and surely it would be no small disparagement, in this land of proud _Dons_, to be posted up in a London paper as a murderer of the _King’s English_. How fortunate was our famous Spanish traveller, my relative, _Espriella_[1] (for you know that there exists a family connexion between us by my mother’s side) to find one of the best writers in England, willing to translate his letters. But since you will not allow me to write in my own language, and since, to say the truth, I feel a pleasure in using that which reminds me of the dear land which has been my second