Except L---- and the standing dishes at the clubs, I see few persons but Prince P----, who is accused here of great haughtiness and _brusquerie_. They likewise whisper that he is a very Blue Beard to his poor wife, and that he shut her up for six years in a solitary castle in a wood, so that at last, wearied by ill treatment, she was obliged to consent to a separation. What say you, good Julia, to this unhappy fate of your best friend. How strangely, however, do rumours and calumnies sometimes arise! How little can we foresee the inconceivable heterogeneous consequences of human actions! What quite unexpected rocks peril our course! Nay, in the moral as in the physical world, we often see tares arise where wheat was sown, while beautiful flowers and fragrant herbs spring out of the dunghill. I have received your long letter, and give you my heartiest thanks for it. Do not be displeased that I so seldom answer in detail, but in some sort pay off the sum of the passages, the neglect of which you reproach me with. Be assured that not a word is lost upon me. Remember that one gives no other answer to the rose for its precious fragrance, than to inhale it with delight. To dissect it would not enhance our pleasure. 'Au reste,' I regret that I have now neither the materials nor the disposition to send you such roses in return. The wall is as bare before me as a white sheet--no kind of 'ombre Chinoise' will appear upon it. _Woolmers, Dec. 11th._ Sir G---- O----, formerly English ambassador to Persia, had invited me to his country house, whither I drove this morning. I arrived late, in darkness and rain, and was obliged to dress instantly to go to a ball at Hatfield, which Lady Salisbury gives on a certain day of the week to the neighbourhood, during the whole time of her residence in the country. The going there is therefore received as a sort of call, and no invitations are sent. Sir G---- took his whole party, among whom was Lord Strangford, the well-known ambassador to Constantinople. You remember that on my return from my northern excursion I saw Hatfield 'en passant.' I found the interior as imposing and respectable, from its air of antiquity, as the exterior. You enter a hall hung with banners and armour; then climb a singular staircase, with carved figures of apes, dogs, monks, &c., and reach a long and rather narrow gallery, in which the dancing was going on. The walls are of old oak 'boiserie,' with curious old-fashioned silver chandeliers fixed to them. At one end of this gallery is a library, and at the other a splendid room with deep metal ornaments depending from the panels of the ceiling, and an enormously high chimney-piece surmounted by a statue of King James. The 'local' was very beautiful, but the ball dull enough, and the company rather too rural. At two o'clock all was over, and I very glad; for, weary and 'ennuyé,' I longed for rest.