I should like to go back to those Grosvenor St. days again. I have had so much time for thinking over old times lately, that I never knew my own life thoroughly before. I can quite fancy sometimes that if we could think in our graves (and who knows), my thoughts would be just what they are now--the same vivid recollections of former friends and scenes, and the same yearning to be with them again. There is hardly anything you and I have talked over, that has not come to life in my mind again, and I could wring my hands, and tear my hair out, to go back and do it all over again. The cottage at Boyle Farm, W. de Roos’s troubles, Henry Montagu, the Sarpent,[430] even that old Danford[431] with the wen, Mrs. Shepherd and the Hossy Jossies. Dear me! Did I ever have jollier days with anybody or love anybody better? Do write and tell me all about yourself now, and your children--I don’t half know them. There is a tassel of small ones, like the tassel at the end of a kite’s tail, that I know nothing about--not even their names. Tell me all their histories. There is an Emily,[432] I know. What shall I send her from Calcutta if we ever arrive there? It is now five months since we have been travelling away from letters, and I feel such hot tears come into my eyes when I think of.... _Monday, February 29, 1836._--I thought we should have been coming home with our fortunes made by this time, but we are still within a hundred miles of the Sandheads. At this precise moment we are at anchor in _green_ water, so different to the deep blue sea, near some shoals, which is advantageous, because we can pick up our petticoats and pick our way to land. _Thursday. In the Hooghly._--At last, by dint of very great patience and very little wind, we have arrived, got the pilot on board early yesterday morning, saw Saugur, which looks as if it had been gnawed to the bone by the tigers that live on it. We are surrounded by boats manned by black people, who, by some strange inadvertance, have utterly forgotten to put on any cloaks whatever. We have a steamer towing us, a civil welcome from Sir C. Metcalfe;[433] a Prince of Oudh, who has been deposed by an undutiful nephew, and deprived of several lacs of rupees, asking for his Excellency, well knowing that the first word even in Hindoostanee is valuable, which is so much his Excellency’s opinion, that he wisely refuses to hear it, and, above all, we have received a profusion of letters from home, ten fat ones for my own share. Nothing unpleasant in them, which, considering some are dated five weeks after we left England, is something to be thankful for.