I have waited some time to answer your letter, in hopes of being able to give you the information you require; but the information does not come and I will wait no longer. I have not seen either Lamb or Wainwright since last summer, when the former spent one day with me here, and another day we all three met at the house of the latter, who now resides in a place he has inherited from a relative at Turnham Green. Lamb is settled at Endfield, about seven miles from London, with his sister, who I fear is in a very indifferent state of health; so his friends see very little of him. In this grand age of utility, I suppose it will soon be discovered that a piece of canvas is more advantageously employed as the door of a safe, where it will secure a joint of meat from the flies, than if it was covered with the finest hues that Titian or Rubens could lay upon it, and a piece of paper better disposed of in keeping the same meat from being burnt while it is roasting, than in preserving the idle fancies of a poet. No matter: if it is so we must swim with the stream. You can employ yourself in cultivating your cabbages and in handling the hay fork, and I not quite so pleasantly in making catalogues of books. We will not be out of fashion, but show ourselves as useful as the rest of the world. In the meantime we may smile at what is going forward, entertain ourselves with our own whims in private, and expect that the tide some day may turn. My family, whom you are so kind as to enquire about, are all well, and all following the order of the day, except one, who has set himself to perverting canvas from its proper use by smearing it over with certain colours, fair indeed to look upon, but quite void of utility. I ought indeed to have made another exception, which is, that they are multiplying much faster than Mr. Malthus would approve. Cowper says somewhere of those who make the world older than the Bible accounts of it, that they have found out that He who made it and revealed its age to Moses was mistaken in the date. May it not be said of the anti-populationers that they virtually accuse him of as great ignorance in the command to multiply and replenish the earth? Well, you and I, Clare, have kept to this text. May we observe all the rest as well! which is so good a conclusion for a parson that I will say no more than that I am ever Yours truly, H. F. CARY. Mrs. C. is at Chiswick, but I can assure you of her good wishes." "Dear Clare,--