Many many thanks, my Dearest, for your kind letter. We certainly do understand one another _extraordinair_ well, as they say in Scotland. Your writing in London too is quite “from the depths I cried out.” Emily, there is a sympathy of bores between us. Sir Guy and I have regularly been put out of humour every morning by the new _Times_, and it will come all the way to Bute, though he has written to agents and bankers and offices to stop it. Like old Time and pleasant Time and Time-serving, there is no arresting it, and its disgusting pages meet my eye and try my temper without cessation. Send me down a little genuine essence of Whig when you have time occasionally. Sir Guy is no politician at all, only I in a quiet way insinuate sound principles into his mind. Not but what I think a military man should be without party, so that the doses I give are very mild. I go no further than just liberality, and now and then drawing him into some remarks on the malversations of ministers. I enter into your dinner and house bothers. I don’t find that variety in the beef of to-morrow and the mutton of to-day, which the _Anti-Jacobin_ expatiates upon with such delight, and the joints diminish in sheep when we eat mutton. As for puddings, they are one and the same, and only one, and then when one has tortured one’s brain and produced a dinner, and that it is eaten, my heart sinks at the prospect that to-morrow will again require its meal, _et les bras me tombent ..._. Lord[143] and Lady Bute are coming here. We don’t know them at all, but I suppose we shall see them, which is bore, for nothing is so tiresome as to be near neighbours with people one scarce knows. One has one foot in intimacy, and the other in formality, and it makes but a limping acquaintance. I don’t think Lady Lansdowne has quite got over my not marrying her way; she covers it up very well, but you know how soon you and I can see through all that, and I know also that Sir Guy is not likely to overcome that feeling in her. He is not a party man, he is not scientific, and unless he likes people he is very shy, and I see they will never make it up. But I always thought marriage must disarrange many acquaintances. I don’t regret acquaintances; even to have had variety of acquaintances is an advantage, for the reason which makes a public school an advantage to a boy; it widens the mind. But to go on through life with them is heartless and thankless too. I mean to save my time, and keep it all for those I like and love.... We have lovely warm spring weather here, always breakfast with the window open and getting away from the fires. I must say the climate far exceeded my expectations. The garden is covered with thick white patches of snow-drops in full bloom. Don’t this make your mouth water, and your eyes too, you poor misery in your cold smoke? Good-bye, Dearest, have you been drawing and what? I don’t mean just now in London, but in your lucid intervals, and are you well?