In driving home at the cross-roads by Corbey we had the good fortune to come in for an Irish dance, the audience or spectators seated on each side of the road on opposite benches; all picturesque in the sunshine of youth and age, with every variety of attitude and expression of enjoyment. The dancers, in all the vivacity and graces of an Irish jig, delighted our English friends; and we stood up in the landau for nearly twenty minutes looking at them. _To_ MISS RUXTON. _Oct. 14._ We have been much interested in the life and letters of that most excellent, amiable, and unpretending Lady Russell. [Footnote: Lady Rachel Wriothesley, second daughter of Thomas Earl of Southampton, who married (1) Francis Lord Vaughan; (2) William Lord Russell, the patriot, beheaded July 21, 1683.] There are touches in these letters which paint domestic happiness, and the character of a mother and a wife with beautiful simplicity. I even like Miss Berry much the better for the manner in which she has edited this book. _Nov 5._ Have you the fourth number of _Modern Voyages and Travels_ which contains Chateauvieux's travels in Italy? I have been so much delighted with it, and feel so sure of its _transporting_ my aunt, that I had hardly read the last words before I was going to pack it off post-haste to Black Castle, but Prudence, in the shape of Honora, in a lilac tabinet gown, whispered, "Better wait till you hear whether they have read it." Have I mentioned to you Bassompierre's _Memoirs_? a new edition, with notes by Croker, which make the pegs on which they hang gay and valuable. What an extraordinary collection of strange facts and strange thoughts are dragged together in the _Quarterly Review_ of the Cemeteries and Catacombs of Paris; the Jewish _House of the Living_; the excommunicated skeletons coming into the church to parley with the Bishop; and the Parisian sentimentalist in the country who sent for barrels of ink from Paris to put his trees in mourning for the death of his mother; and the fountain, called the _weeping eye_, for the death of his wife, by the Dane. I hope, my dear friends, that you have been reading these things, and that they have struck you as they did me; there are few things pleasanter than these "jumping thoughts." Now that I have a little time, and eyes to read again, I find it delightful, and I have a voracious appetite, and a relish for food, good, bad, and indifferent, I am afraid, like a half-famished, shipwrecked wretch. _28th._