for the candles are burnt down and I am using the wax taper--which has a long snuff on it--the fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the carpet--I am writing this on the Maid's tragedy which I have read since tea with Great pleasure. Beside this volume of Beaumont and Fletcher--there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom Moore's called _Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress_,--nothing in it. These are trifles but I require nothing so much of you but that you will give me a like description of yourselves, however it may be when you are writing to me. Could I see that same thing done of any great Man long since dead it would be a great delight: As to know in what position Shakespeare sat when he began 'To be or not to be'--such things become interesting from distance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that sweet sleep which no two beings deserve more than you do--I must fancy you so--and please myself in the fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and your lives--God bless you--I whisper good night in your ears and you will dream of me. This is on the 13th of March. Six days later he gives another picture, this time of his state of body rather than of mind:-- This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless--I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_--my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me; they seem rather like figures on a Greek vase--a Man and two women whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body over-powering the Mind. [Illustration: PL. IX 'Figures on a Greek vase: a man and two women' FROM AN ETCHING IN PIRANESI'S VASI E CANDELABRI]