I will not attempt to tell you how much gratified I have been by the receipt of your first English letter; nor can I describe to you with what delight and gratification I learn that I am held in such high esteem by your great countrymen, whose favourable appreciation is flattering indeed. To you, who have undertaken the laborious (and often, I fear, very irksome) task of clothing me in the German garb, I owe a long arrear of thanks. I wish you would come to England, and afford me an opportunity of slightly reducing the account. It is with great regret that I have to inform you, in reply to the request contained in your pleasant communication, that my publishers have already made such arrangements and are in possession of such stipulations relative to the proof-sheets of my new works, that I have no power to send them out of England. If I had, I need not tell you what pleasure it would afford me to promote your views. I am too sensible of the trouble you must have already had with my writings to impose upon you now a long letter. I will only add, therefore, that I am, My dear Sir, With great sincerity, Faithfully yours. [Sidenote: Mr. Daniel Maclise.] BROADSTAIRS, _June 2nd, 1840._ MY DEAR MACLISE, My foot is in the house, My bath is on the sea, And, before I take a souse, Here's a single note to thee. It merely says that the sea is in a state of extraordinary sublimity; that this place is, as the Guide Book most justly observes, "unsurpassed for the salubrity of the refreshing breezes, which are wafted on the ocean's pinions from far-distant shores." That we are all right after the perils and voyages of yesterday. That the sea is rolling away in front of the window at which I indite this epistle, and that everything is as fresh and glorious as fine weather and a splendid coast can make it. Bear these recommendations in mind, and shunning Talfourdian pledges, come to the bower which is shaded for you in the one-pair front, where no chair or table has four legs of the same length, and where no drawers will open till you have pulled the pegs off, and then they keep open and won't shut again. COME! I can no more. Always faithfully yours. [Sidenote: Mr. George Cattermole.] DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _December 21st._ MY DEAR GEORGE,