. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in
all probability, be as foolishly spent on shore as in the ship; but
one like's to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully
empty; but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with my
perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;--not stay, if I can help
it, but where to go?[77] Sligo is for the North;--a pleasant place,
Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a muff, or
else tumbling into one's neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief! If the
winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it
inflict upon your solitary traveller?--Give me a _sun_, I care not
how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as
easily made as your Persian's.[78] The Giaour is now a thousand and
odd lines. 'Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,' eh,
Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,

"BN.

"P.S. I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted
letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the
brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more
serious, and entirely new, scrape than any of the last twelve
months,--and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can
neither live with nor without these women.

"I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left
Newstead, you reside near it. Did you ever see it? _do_--but don't
tell me that you like it. If I had known of such intellectual
neighbourhood, I don't think I should have quitted it. You could
have come over so often, as a bachelor,--for it was a thorough
bachelor's mansion--plenty of wine and such sordid
sensualities--with books enough, room enough, and an air of
antiquity about all (except the lasses) that would have suited
you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had
built myself a bath and a _vault_--and now I sha'n't even be buried
in it. It is odd that we can't even be certain of a _grave_, at
least a particular one. I remember, when about fifteen, reading
your poems there, which I can repeat almost now,--and asking all
kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not
dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see
him--and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical
propen