My rule concerning Books is, that Giver and Taker (each in his turn) should just say nothing. As I am not an Artist (though a very great Author) I will say that Four of your Drawings seemed capital to me: I cannot remember the Roundabouts which they initialed: except two: 1. The lazy idle Boy, which you note as not being used; I suppose, from not being considered sufficiently appropriate to the Essay (which I forget), but which I thought altogether good; and the old Man, with a look of Edwards! 2. Little Boy in Black, very pretty: 3. (I forget the Essay) People looking at Pictures: one of them, the principal, surely a recollection of W. M. T. himself. Then 4. There was a bawling Boy: subject forgotten. I looked at them many times through the forenoon: and came away here at 2 p.m. I do not suppose, or wish, that you should make over to me all these Drawings, which I suppose are the originals from which the Wood was cut. I say I do not 'wish,' because I am in my 72nd year: and I now give away rather than accept. But I wished for one at least of your hand; for its own sake, and as a remembrance, for what short time is left me, of one whom I can sincerely say I regard greatly for himself, as also for those Dunwich days in which I first became known to him. 'Viola qui est dit.' And I wish you were here, not for your own sake, for it is dull enough. No Sun, no Ship, a perpetual drizzle; and to me the melancholy of another Aldbro' of years gone by. Out of that window there 'le petit' Churchyard sketched Thorpe headland under an angry Sunset of Oct. 55 which heralded a memorable Gale that washed up a poor Woman with a Babe in her arms: and old Mitford had them buried with an inscribed Stone in the old Churchyard, peopled with dead 'Mariners'; and Inscription and Stone are now gone. Yesterday I got out in a Boat, drizzly as it was: but to-day there is too much Sea to put off. I am to be home by the week's end, if not before. The melancholy of Slaughden last night, with the same Sloops sticking sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago! And I the venerable Remembrancer. MY DEAR KEENE, I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your Paris map, which is excellent; so that, eyes permitting, I can follow my Sevigne about from her Rue St. Catherine over the Seine to the Faubourg St. Germain quite distinctly. These cold East winds, however, coming so suddenly after the heat, put those Eyes of mine in a pickle, so as I am obliged to let them lie fallow, looking only at the blessed Green of the Trees before my Window, or on my Quarterdeck. {293} My two Nieces are with me, so that I leave all the house to them, except my one Room downstairs, which serves for Parlour, Bedroom and all. And it does very well for me; reminding me of my former Cabin life in my little Ship 'd'autrefois.' . . .