Several months have now elapsed since my marriage. I am living quietly in the country, among my books, and looking forward with calmness, rather than impatience, to the time which shall again bring me before the world. Marriage with me is not that sepulchre of all human hope and energy which it often is with others. I am not more partial to my arm chair, nor more averse to shaving, than of yore. I do not bound my prospects to the dinner-hour, nor my projects to "migrations from the blue bed to the brown." Matrimony found me ambitious; it has not cured me of the passion: but it has concentrated what was scattered, and determined what was vague. If I am less anxious than formerly for the reputation to be acquired in society, I am more eager for honour in the world; and instead of amusing my enemies, and the saloon, I trust yet to be useful to my friends and to mankind. Whether this is a hope, altogether vain and idle; whether I have, in the self-conceit common to all men, peculiarly prominent in myself, overrated both the power and the integrity of my mind (for the one is bootless without the other,) neither I nor the world can yet tell. "Time," says one of the fathers, "is the only touchstone which distinguishes the prophet from the boaster." Meanwhile, gentle reader, during the two years which I purpose devoting to solitude and study, I shall not be so occupied with my fields and folios, as to render me uncourteous to thee. If ever thou hast known me in the city, I give thee a hearty invitation to come and visit me in the country. I promise thee, that my wines and viands shall not disgrace the companion of Guloseton: nor my conversation be much duller than my book. I will compliment thee on thy horses, thou shalt congratulate me upon my wife. Over old wine we will talk over new events; and if we flag at the latter, why, we will make ourselves amends with the former. In short, if thou art neither very silly nor very wise, it shall be thine own fault if we are not excellent friends. I feel that it would be but poor courtesy in me, after having kept company with Lord Vincent, through the tedious journey of three volumes, to dismiss him now without one word of valediction. May he, in the political course he has adopted, find all the admiration his talents deserve; and if ever we meet as foes, let our heaviest weapon be a quotation, and our bitterest vengeance a jest. Lord Guloseton regularly corresponds with me, and his last letter contained a promise to visit me in the course of the month, in order to recover his appetite (which has been much relaxed of late) by the country air. My uncle wrote to me, three weeks since, announcing the death of the infant Lady Glenmorris had brought him. Sincerely do I wish that his loss may be supplied. I have already sufficient fortune for my wants, and sufficient hope for my desires.