"Illustrissimo Signor Tommaso" (that was the usual style of her address to me), "as your book is just out you must feel quite _en train_ for puffs of any description. Therefore I send you the best I have seen for a long while, _La Physiologie du Fumeur_. But even if you don't like it, _don't_ put it in your pipe and smoke it. _Vide_ Joseph Fume." A little subsequently she writes: "Signor Tommaso, the only revenge I shall take for your lecture" (probably on the matter of some outrageous extravagance) "is not to call you _illustrissimo_ and not to send you an illuminated postillion" (a previous letter having been ornamented with such a decoration at the top of the sheet), "but let you find your way to Venice in the dark as you can, and then and there, 'On the Rialto I will rate you,' and, being a man, you know there is no chance of my _over-rating_ you." The following passage from the same letter refers to some negotiations with which she had entrusted me relative to some illustrations she was bent on having in a forthcoming book she was about to publish:--"As for the immortal Cruikshank, tell him that I am sure the mighty genius which conceived Lord Bateman could not refuse to give any lady the _werry best_, and if he does I shall pass the rest of my life registering a similar _wow_ to that of the fair Sophia, and exclaiming, 'I vish, George Cruikshank, as you vas mine.'" The rest of the long, closely-written four-paged letter is an indiscriminate and bitter, though joking attack, upon the race of publishers. She calls Mr. Colburn an "embodied shiver," which will bring a smile to the lips of those--few, I fear--who remember the little man.