Our prospect of going down to Suffolk this year is much on the wane: the Doctor has desired that Lusia should remain in town. Though I should like much to see you and others, yet I am on the whole glad that my sisters should stay here, where they are likely to be better off. I shall stay with them, as I am of use. I may however run down one day to give you a look. I wish you would enquire and let me know how Mr. Jenney {96} is: he was not well when my Father was in Suffolk. Only _don't ask himself_: he hates that. And now farewell. This is a long letter: but look at it by way of notice when the picture comes to you. If it does not come on Monday don't be angry: but it probably will. BRIGHTON, _Dec_. 29, 1841. MY DEAR BARTON, The account you give of my old Squire 'that he is in a poorish way' does not satisfy me: and I want you to ask Mr. Jones the surgeon, whom you know, and who used to attend on the Squire,--to ask him, I say, how that Squire is. He has been ill for the last two or three winters, and may not be worse now than before. He is one of our oldest friends: and though he and I have not very much in common, he is a part of my country of England, and involved in the very idea of the quiet fields of Suffolk. He is the owner of old Bredfield House in which I was born--and the seeing him cross the stiles between Hasketon and Bredfield, and riding with his hounds over the lawn, is among the scenes in that novel called The Past which dwell most in my memory. What is the difference between what has been, and what never has been, _none_? At the same time this Squire, so hardy, is indignant at the idea of being ill or laid up: so one must inquire of him by some roundabout means. . . . We had a large party here last night: Horace Smith came: like his brother James, but better looking: and said to be very agreeable. Do you [know] that he gives a dreadful account of Mrs. Southey: that meek and Christian poetess: he says, she's a devil in temper. He told my mother so: had you heard of this? I don't believe it yet: one ought not so soon, ought one? Goodbye. _To W. B. Donne_. MONDAY. MY DEAR DONNE, Thompson tells me you are writing a Roman History. But you have not been asked to Lecture at the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution, as I have--'any subject except controversial Divinity, and party Politics.' In the meantime I have begun Livy: I have read one book, and can't help looking at the four thick octavos that remain-- Oh beate Sesti, Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. {97} But it is very stately reading. As to old Niebuhr, it is mean to attack old legends that can't defend themselves. And what does it signify in the least if they are true or not? Whoever _actively_ believed that Romulus was suckled by a wolf? But I have found in Horace a proper motto for those lumbering Germans: Quis Parthum paveat? quis gelidum Scythen? Quis Germania quos horrida parturit Foetus? {98}