DEAR M.,—I was just stretching myself after breakfast, and thinking that I must put on my boots and turn out into the horrible fog that was darkening daylight, when your welcome letters came, and it being holiday time I treated myself to an immediate perusal. I must beg you not to imagine me sitting in a large bare room in an _inn_. The term ‘inn’ is only applied in this case to a particularly quiet and respectable little street. The term ‘Inns of Court’ means a number of buildings round an open court, withdrawn from the street, entered by an arched passage under some house, and used now or at some former time for law purposes. That was the origin of Thavies Inn; it was formerly a portion of an old law court, and is particularly _proper_, having iron gates at the archway, which are shut at night, and a porter living in the little house at the entrance, who is always on the look-out for beggars or other un-respectable characters; and the way in which a little barrel organ that has managed to slip in is ‘shut up’ at the first bar has always amused me, and provoked me at the same time. The room also, which was bare enough at first, has assumed a much more homelike aspect since two young friends sent me some pictures to hang on the walls, and a portfolio of paintings, with a little stand on which to place a new one every day; and having turned the sideboard into a bookcase, I can assure you it looks quite comfortable when I have drawn the round table to the fire and settled down for the evening.