I spent a long Day with Thompson: {40} and much liked the painted Roof. On Thursday I went to Lynn: which I took a Fancy to: the odd old Houses: the Quay: the really grand Inn (Duke's Head, in the Market place) and the civil, Norfolk-talking, People. I went to Hunstanton, which is rather dreary: one could see the Country at Sandringham was good. I enquired fruitlessly about those Sandringham Pictures, etc.: even the Auctioneer, whom I found in the Bar of the Inn, could tell nothing of where they had gone. _To W. B. Donne_. MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE. _Sat. July_ 18/63. MY DEAR DONNE, . . . I can hardly tell you whether I am much pleased with my new Boat; for I hardly know myself. She is (as I doubted would be from the first) rather awkward in our narrow River; but then she was to be a good Sea- boat; and I don't know but she is; and will be better in all ways when we have got her in proper trim. Yesterday we gave her what they call '_a tuning_' in a rather heavy swell round Orford Ness: and she did well without a reef, etc. But, now all is got, I don't any the more want to go far away by Sea, any more than by Land; having no Curiosity left for other Places, and glad to get back to my own Chair and Bed after three or four Days' Absence. So long as I get on the Sea from time to time, it is much the same to me whether off Aldbro' or Penzance. And I find I can't sleep so well on board as I used to do thirty years ago: and not to get one's Sleep, you know, indisposes one more or less for the Day. However, we talk of Dover, Folkestone, Holland, etc., which will give one's sleeping Talents a _tuning_. _To George Crabbe_. WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 19, [1863]. MY DEAR GEORGE, You tell me the Romney is at Gardner's: but where is Gardner's? And what was the Price of the Portrait? Laurence said well about Romney that, as compared to Sir Joshua and Gainsboro', his Pictures looked tinted, rather than painted; the colour of the Cheek (for instance) rather superficially laid on, as rouge, rather than ingrained, and mantling like Blood from below. Laurence had seen those at last year's Exhibition: I have not seen near so many. I remember one that seemed to me capital at Lord Bute's in Bedfordshire. I came home yesterday from a short Cruise to Yarmouth, etc., where some people were interested in the Channel Fleet. But I could take no interest in Steam Ships and Iron Rams. WOODBRIDGE, _August_ 4, [1863]. MY DEAR GEORGE, I have at last done my Holland: you won't be surprised to hear that I did it in two days, and was too glad to rush home on the first pretence, after (as usual) seeing nothing I cared the least about. The Country itself I had seen long before in Dutch Pictures, and between Beccles and Norwich: the Towns I had seen in Picturesque Annuals, Drop Scenes, etc. But the Pictures--the Pictures--themselves?