wonderfully amusing for a while, and I enjoy it greatly. From what I have seen of the world of pleasure, I begin to suspect that we English people are never likely to have any great success in our attempts at it; and for this simple reason, that we bring to our social hours exhausted bodies and fatigued minds; we labor hard all day in law courts or counting-houses or committee-rooms, and when evening comes are overcome by our exertions, and very little disposed for those efforts which make conversation brilliant, or intercourse amusing. Your foreigner, however, is a chartered libertine. He feels that nature never meant him for anything but idleness; he takes to frivolity naturally and easily; and, what is of no small importance too, without any loss of self-esteem! Ah, Tom! that is the great secret of it all. We never do our fooling gracefully. There is everlastingly rising up within us a certain bitter conviction that we are not doing fairly by ourselves, and that our faculties might be put to better and more noble uses than we have engaged them in. We walk the stage of life like an actor ashamed of his costume, and "our motley" never sets easily on us to the last. I think I had better stop dogmatizing, Tom. Heaven knows where it may lead me, if I don't. Old Woodcock says that "he might have been a vagabond, if Providence had n't made him a justice of the peace;" so I feel that it is not impossible I might have been a moral philosopher, if fate had n't made me the husband of Mrs. Dodd. Wednesday Afternoon. My dear Tom,--I had thought to have despatched this prosy epistle without being obliged to inflict you with any personal details of the Dodd family. I was even vaunting to myself that I had kept us all "out of the indictment," and now I discover that I have made a signal failure, and the codicil must revoke the whole body of the testament. How shall I ever get my head clear enough to relate all I want to tell you? I go looking after a stray idea the way I 'd chase a fellow in a crowded fair or market, catching a glimpse of him now--losing him again--here, with my hand almost on him,--and the next minute no sign of him! Try and follow me, however; don't quit me for a moment; and, above all, Tom, whatever vagaries I may fall into, be still assured that I have a road to go, if I only have the wit to discover it!