MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have not had a moment's kindly leisure to answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I shall be to see you in this least of all possible dwellings, but where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim's quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of your journey;--if young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as to the important business with the which I have been occupied: You are to know we have had our kind hostesses of Piccadilly upon a two months' visit to us. We owed them so much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas, the wind has blown, and the rain has fallen, in a style which beats all that ever I remembered. We accomplished, with some difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and, by dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we defied bad weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the weather settled into regular tempest, when we settled at Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to bad weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to brave the extremities of the season, it only served to increase the dismay of our unlucky visitors, who, accustomed only to Paris and London, expected _fiacres_ at the Milestane Cross, and a pair of oars at the Deadman's Haugh. Add to this a strong disposition to _commérage_, when there was no possibility of gratifying it, and a {p.118} total indisposition to scenery or rural amusements, which were all we had to offer--and you will pity both hosts and guests. I have the gratification to think I fully supported the hospitality of my country. I walked them to death, I talked them to death, I showed them landscapes which the driving rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them of feuds about which they cared as little as I do about their next-door news in Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards, and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of being scolded, I got on pretty well. Still the weather was so execrable, that, as the old drunken landlord used to say at Arroquhar, "I was perfectly ashamed of it;" and, to this moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so patiently as they did. But the young people and the cottages formed considerable resources. Yesterday they left us, deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can hardly blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,--which that noble luminary seems disposed to confirm, by making this the first fair day we have seen this month--so that his beams will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined to put Scotland to utter shame.