“With the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce to you the happy arrival of the Ramchunder, and the _dearest and handsomest_ little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Clive is in _perfect health_. He speaks English _wonderfully_ well. He cried when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought him from Southampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are _of very brief duration!_ The voyage, Mr. Sneid states, was most favourable, occupying only four months and eleven days. How different from that more lengthened and dangerous passage of eight months, and almost perpetual sea-sickness, in which my poor dear sister Emma went to Bengal, to become the wife of the best of husbands and the mother of the dearest of little boys, and to enjoy these inestimable blessings for so brief an interval! She has quitted this wicked and wretched world for one where all is peace. The misery and ill-treatment which she endured from Captain Case her first odious husband, were, I am sure, amply repaid, my dear Colonel, by your subsequent affection. If the most sumptuous dresses which London, even Paris, could supply, jewellery the most costly, and elegant lace, and _everything lovely and fashionable_, could content a woman, these, I am sure, during the last four years of her life, the poor girl had. Of what avail are they when this scene of vanity is closed? “Mr. Sneid announces that the passage was most favourable. They stayed a week at the Cape, and three days at St. Helena, where they visited Bonaparte’s tomb (another instance of the vanity of all things!), and their voyage was enlivened off Ascension by the taking of some delicious turtle! “You may be sure that _the most liberal sum_ which you have placed to my credit with the Messrs. Hobson and Co. shall be faithfully expended on my dear little charge. Mrs. Newcome can scarcely be called his grandmamma, I suppose; and I daresay her Methodistical ladyship will not care to see the daughter and grandson of a clergyman of the Church of England! My brother Charles took leave to wait upon her when he presented your last _most generous_ bill at the bank. She received him _most rudely_, and said a fool and his money are soon parted; and when Charles said, ‘Madam, I am the brother of the late Mrs. Major Newcome,’ ‘Sir,’ says she, ‘I judge nobody; but from all accounts, you are the brother of a very vain, idle, thoughtless, extravagant woman; and Thomas Newcome was as foolish about his wife as about his money.’ Of course, unless Mrs. N. writes to invite dear Clive, I shall not think of sending him to Clapham.