drop in to-morrow night? Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us. Mrs. _Gold_ is well, but proves "uncoined," as the lovers about Wheathampstead would say. I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and the following holiday in the fields a-maying. All of those pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead desk,--how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down! This dead wood of the desk instead of your living trees! But then, again, I hate the joskins, _a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins_. Each state of life has its inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one. Not that I repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and decent apparel,--I shall, at least, when I get a new hat, A red-haired man just interrupted me. He has broke the current of my thoughts, I haven't a word to add, I don't know why I send this letter, but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days. Perhaps it will go off before your reply comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was ever welcomer from, you, from Paris or Macao. C. LAMB. [1] See the Elia essay, "Mackery End, in H---shire." LXVI. TO MISS WORDSWORTH. _November_ 25, 1819. Dear Miss Wordsworth,--You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy [1] before I ventured to express a prediction, Till yesterday I had barely seen him,--_Virgilium tantum vidi_; but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm; so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's _bon mots_, but the following are a few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river, at least,--which was a touch of the comparative; but then he added in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a political economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week toll. Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another question, as to the flux and reflux; which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, "Then it must come to the same thing at last,"--which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard,--so