"I take up my pen, and lay aside the false nose I have been wearing night and day for close on a week, to make a communication which will doubtless interest you as it has profoundly affected me. It will also interest your nephew and his lady (whose hands I kiss) if they succeeded in effecting their escape to England--where, failing news of them, I do myself a frequent pleasure to picture them at rest upon the quiet waters of domestic felicity. But I address myself rather to you, whom (albeit on the briefest acquaintance) I shall ever regard as the personification of stability and mild repose. Heracleitus and his followers may prate of a world of flux; but there are men to whom the recollections of their fellows ever turn confidently, secure of finding them in the same place; and of such, sir, you are the palmary example among my acquaintance. "On the circumstances of our retreat from Genoa I need not dilate. We decamped--I and my brother _artistes_--to Pisa, where, after an unsatisfactory season, we broke up our company by mutual consent and went our various ways in search of fortune. Mr. Badcock--by this time a pantaloon of considerable promise and not to be sneezed at in senile parts where affection or natural decay required, or at least excused, a broken accent--threw in his lot with me: and we bent our steps together upon this unique city, where for close upon twelve months I have drawn a respectable salary as Director of Public Festivities to the Sisterhood of the Conventual Body of Santa Chiara. Nor is the post a sinecure; since these estimable women, though themselves vowed against earthly delights, possess a waterside garden which, periodically--and especially in the week preceding Lent--they throw open to the public; a practice from which they derive unselfish pleasure and a useful advertisement.