'Me voila ici' still! having weathered it out so long. No bad Place, I assure you, though you who are accustomed to Pall Mall, Clubs, etc., wouldn't like it. Mudie finds one out easily: and the London Library too: and altogether I can't complain of not getting such drowsy Books as I want. Hakluyt lasted a long while: then came Captain Cook, whom I hadn't read since I was a Boy, and whom I was very glad to see again. But he soon evaporates in his large Type Quartos. I can hardly manage Emerson Tennent's Ceylon: a very dry Catalogue Raisonnee of the Place. A little Essay of De Quincey's gave me a better Idea of it (as I suppose) in some twenty or thirty pages. Anyhow, I prefer Lowestoft, considering the Snakes, Sand-leaches, Mosquitos, etc. I suppose Russell's Indian Diary is over-coloured: but I feel sure it's true in the Main: and he has the Art to make one feel in the thick of it; quite enough in the Thick, however. Sir C. Napier came here to try and get the Beachmen to enlist in the Naval Reserve. Not one would go: they won't give up their Independence: and so really half starve here during Winter. Then Spring comes and they go and catch the Herrings which, if left alone, would multiply by Millions by Autumn: and so kill their Golden Goose. They are a strange set of Fellows. I think a Law ought to be made against their Spring Fishing: more important, for their own sakes, than Game Laws. I laid out half a crown on your Fraser {13}: and liked much of it very much: especially the Beginning about the Advantage the Novelist has over the Play-writer. A little too much always about Miss Austen, whom yet I think quite capital in a Circle I have found quite unendurable to walk in. Thackeray's first Number was famous, I thought: his own little Roundabout Paper so pleasant: but the Second Number, I say, lets the Cockney in already: about Hogarth: Lewes is vulgar: and I don't think one can care much for Thackeray's Novel. He is always talking so of himself, too. I have been very glad to find I could take to a Novel again, in Trollope's Barchester Towers, etc.: not perfect, like Miss Austen: but then so much wider Scope: and perfect enough to make me feel I know the People though caricatured or carelessly drawn. I doubt if you can read my writing here: or whether it will be worth your Pains to do so. If you can, or can not, one Day write me a Line, which I will read. I suppose when the Fields and Hedges begin to grow green I shall move a little further inland to be among them. _To Mrs. Charles Allen_. FARLINGAY: WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 2/60. DEAR MRS. ALLEN,