I have just finished, all but the last three chapters, the fourth Book of Thucydides, and it is now no task to me to go on. This fourth book is the most interesting I have read; containing all that blockade of Pylos; that first great thumping of the Athenians at Oropus, after which they for ever dreaded the Theban troops. And it came upon me 'come stella in ciel,' when, in the account of the taking of Amphipolis, {233} Thucydides, [Greek text], comes with seven ships to the rescue! Fancy old Hallam sticking to his gun at a Martello tower! This was the way to write well; and this was the way to make literature respectable. Oh, Alfred Tennyson, could you but have the luck to be put to such employment! No man would do it better; a more heroic figure to head the defenders of his country could not be. _To S. Laurence_. BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, [30 _Jan_. 1848.] MY DEAR LAURENCE, How are you--how are you getting on? A voice from the tombs thus addresses you; respect the dead, and answer. Barton is well; that is, I left him well on Friday: but he was just going off to attend a Quaker's funeral in the snow: whether he has survived that, I don't know. To-morrow is his Birth-day: and I am going (if he be alive) to help him to celebrate it. His portrait has been hung (under my directions) over the mantel-piece in his sitting room, with a broad margin of some red stuff behind it, to set it off. You may turn up your nose at all this; but let me tell you it is considered one of the happiest contrivances ever adopted in Woodbridge. Nineteen people out of twenty like the portrait much; the twentieth, you may be sure, is a man of no taste at all. I hear you were for a long time in Cumberland. Did you paint a waterfall--or old Wordsworth--or Skiddaw, or any of the beauties? Did you see anything so inviting to the pencil as the river Deben? When are you coming to see us again? Churchyard relies on your coming; but then he is a very sanguine man, and, though a lawyer, wonderfully confident in the promises of men. How are all your family? You see I have asked you some questions; so you must answer them; and believe me yours truly, E. FITZGERALD. _To John Allen_. BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _March_ 2/48. MY DEAR ALLEN, . . . Every year I have less and less desire to go to London: and now you are not there I have one reason the less for going there. I want to settle myself in some town--for good--for life! A pleasant country town, a cathedral town perhaps! What sort of a place is Lichfield? I say nothing about French Revolutions, which are too big for a little letter. I think we shall all be in a war before the year; I know not how else the French can keep peace at home but by quarrelling abroad. But 'come what come may.' My old friend Major Moor died rather suddenly last Saturday: {235} and this next Saturday is to be buried in the Church to which he used to take me when I was a boy. He has not left a better man behind him. BOULGE, _Friday_.