I received your parcel last night, by post, from Gunville, whither (crossly enough) I am going with our friend Poole to-morrow morning. I do from my very heart thank you for your prompt and friendly exertion, and for your truly interesting letter. I shall write to Wedgwood by this post; he is still at Cote, near Bristol; but I shall take the _Bang_ back with me to Gunville, as Wedgwood will assuredly be there in the course of ten days. Jos. Wedgwood is named the Sheriff of the County. When I have heard from Wedgwood, or when he has tried this _Nepenthe_, I will write to you. I have been here nearly a fortnight; and in better health than usual. Tranquillity, warm rooms, and a dear old friend, are specifics for my complaints. Poole is indeed a very, very good man. I like even his incorrigibility in small faults and deficiencies: it looks like a wise determination of Nature to let well alone; and is a consequence, a necessary one perhaps, of his immutability in his important good qualities. His journal, with his own comments, has proved not only entertaining but highly instructive to me. I rejoice in Davy's progress. There are three Suns recorded in Scripture:--Joshua's, that stood still; Hezekiah's, that went backward; and David's, that went forth and hastened on his course, like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend's prove the latter! It is a melancholy thing to see a man, like the Sun in the close of the Lapland summer, meridional in his horizon; or like wheat in a rainy season, that shoots up well in the stalk, but does not _kern_. As I have hoped, and do hope, more proudly of Davy than of any other man; and as he has been endeared to me more than any other man, by the being a Thing of Hope to me (more, far more than myself to my own self in my most genial moments,)--so of course my disappointment would be proportionally severe. It were falsehood, if I said that I think his present situation most calculated, of all others, to foster either his genius, or the clearness and incorruptness of his opinions and moral feelings. I see two Serpents at the cradle of his genius, Dissipation with a perpetual increase of acquaintances, and the constant presence of Inferiors and Devotees, with that too great facility of attaining admiration, which degrades Ambition into Vanity--but the Hercules will strangle both the reptile monsters. I have thought it possible to exert talents with perseverance, and to attain true greatness wholly pure, even from the impulses of ambition; but on this subject Davy and I always differed.