"In the mean time, I am at war 'with all the world and his wife;' or rather, 'all the world and _my_ wife' are at war with me, and have not yet crushed me,--whatever they _may_ do. I don't know that in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooting of present pleasure, or rational hope for the future, as this same. I say this, because I think so, and feel it. But I shall not sink under it the more for that mode of considering the question--I have made up my mind. "By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear on the subject; and don't attempt to defend me. If you succeeded in that, it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offence--who can bear refutation? I have but a very short answer for those whom it concerns; and all the activity of myself and some vigorous friends have not yet fixed on any tangible ground or personage, on which or with whom I can discuss matters, in a summary way, with a fair pretext;--though I nearly had _nailed one_ yesterday, but he evaded by--what was judged by others--a satisfactory explanation. I speak of _circulators_--against whom I have no enmity, though I must act according to the common code of usage, when I hit upon those of the serious order. "Now for other matters--poesy, for instance. Leigh Hunt's poem is a devilish good one--quaint, here and there, but with the substratum of originality, and with poetry about it, that will stand the test. I do not say this because he has inscribed it to me, which I am sorry for, as I should otherwise have begged you to review it in the Edinburgh.[91] It is really deserving of much praise, and a favourable critique in the E.R. would but do it justice, and set it up before the public eye where it ought to be. "How are you? and where? I have not the most distant idea what I am going to do myself, or with myself--or where--or what. I had, a few weeks ago, some things to say that would have made you laugh; but they tell me now that I must not laugh, and so I have been very serious--and am. "I have not been very well--with a _liver_ complaint--but am much better within the last fortnight, though still under Iatrical advice. I have latterly seen a little of * * * * "I must go and dress to dine. My little girl is in the country, and, they tell me, is a very fine child, and now nearly three months old. Lady Noel (my mother-in-law, or, rather, _at_ law) is at present overlooking it. Her daughter (Miss Milbanke that was) is, I believe, in London with her father. A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N.'s) who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the learned--very much the occult cause of our late domestic discrepancies.