MY DEAREST THERESA, I do not find this visiting system good for the growth of letters. I have less to say when I see fresh people and fresh houses constantly, than at home, where I see the same every day. Your last letter, too, gave me an inspiration to answer it on the spot, but I had not time then, and so it subsided. You poor dear! Are you still liable to be haunted by recollections and tormented by the ghosts of past pleasures--youthful but weak? I have _had_ so many feelings of the sort you mean, that your letter interested me particularly; but then it must be at least five years since the last ghost of the last pleasure visited me, so imagine the date of the pleasure by the date of the ghost--and the remains of _youthful_ interests do not disturb me any longer. It is always _childhood_ I return to, and exclusively the sight of Eden Farm[330] and aught connected therewith that swells my heart to bursting, and _that_ I never see now. Everything else is mended up again, and for the life of me I cannot understand how I ever could have been so sentimental and foolish as it appears I must have been.[331] I say no more; but my old extract book has thrown me into fits of laughter. Calculate from that fact the horrid and complete extinction of sentiment that has taken place. You will come to it, and be surprised to see what a happy invention life is. I am afraid I like it too much. We have been at Shottesbrook. Caroline Vansittart is so uncommonly well; there are hardly any traces of her illness. The dear children will be children till they die of old age. Then we went to Ewehurst which the Drummonds have rented from the Duke of Wellington. It is a very fine place, but an old house, and so cold. All the children had colds, and all the Aunts caught them, of course; only, instead of catching one cold I caught six, and have done nothing but sneeze ever since. We stayed there a week and came here this day sen’night, found the house more luxurious and comfortable than ever after the cold of Ewehurst, and Mr. Wall in great felicity. Old Mrs. Wall I think much the most delightful old lady I ever knew. Lady Harriet we found here, and the Sturts, and the Poodles,[332] and Mr. Pierpont, and latterly we have had a Doctor Daltrey, a very clever man who has thrown a pinch of sense into the very frivolous giggling conversation we have sunk into.