w fever--and Newstead
delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the
Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your
pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I
neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish
one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself
seriously to wishing without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to
believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the
nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would
not be very patriotic.

"No more reflections--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my
second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for
it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of--

'Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd.'

At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I
have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of
expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance
could equal the events--

'quaeque ipse ...vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.'

"To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will
grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the
prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of
a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I
don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever.

"Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too,--who
seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not
married--has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife?
Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man
who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that
can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and
young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony.
All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W. and S. have
both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good
deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls _off_ a man's temples
in that state.

"Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow, for Eliza, and send the device for the
seals of myself and * * * * * Mem. too, to call on the Stael and Lady
Holland to-morrow, and on * *, who has advised me (without seeing it, by
the by) not to publ