"I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of introducing the Alpine scenery in description: and this I sent lately to Murray. Almost all the _dram. pers._ are spirits, ghosts, or magicians, and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may suppose what a Bedlam tragedy it must be: make him show it you. I sent him all three acts piece-meal, by the post, and suppose they have arrived. "I have now written to you at least six letters, or lettered, and all I have received in return is a note about the length you used to write from Bury Street to St. James's Street, when we used to dine with Rogers, and talk laxly, and go to parties, and hear poor Sheridan now and then. Do you remember one night he was so tipsy that I was forced to put his cocked hat on for him,--for he could not,--and I let him down at Brookes's, much as he must since have been let down into his grave. Heigh ho! I wish I was drunk--but I have nothing but this d----d barley-water before me. "I am still in love,--which is a dreadful drawback in quitting a place, and I can't stay at Venice much longer. What I shall do on this point I don't know. The girl means to go with me, but I do not like this for her own sake. I have had so many conflicts in my own mind on this subject, that I am not at all sure they did not help me to the fever I mentioned above. I am certainly very much attached to her, and I have cause to be so, if you knew all. But she has a child; and though, like all the 'children of the sun,' she consults nothing but passion, it is necessary I should think for both; and it is only the virtuous, like * * * *, who can afford to give up husband and child, and live happy ever after. "The Italian ethics are the most singular ever met with. The perversion, not only of action, but of reasoning, is singular in the women. It is not that they do not consider the thing itself as wrong, and very wrong, but _love_ (the _sentiment_ of love) is not merely an excuse for it, but makes it an _actual virtue_, provided it is disinterested, and not a _caprice_, and is confined to one object. They have awful notions of constancy; for I have seen some ancient figures of eighty pointed out as amorosi of forty, fifty, and sixty years' standing. I can't say I have ever seen a husband and wife so coupled. "Ever, &c. "P.S. Marianna, to whom I have just translated what I have written on our subject to you, says--'If you loved me thoroughly, you would not make so many fine reflections, which are only good _forbirsi i scarpi_,'--that is, 'to clean shoes withal,'--a Venetian proverb of appreciation, which is applicable to reasoning of all kinds."