hat seems dropped by the Angel
that was tired of carrying two packages; marry, with the other he made
shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see my little
Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from trace of human habitation; yet
hath it pulpit, reading-desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if
Robinson Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself with old church-going
images. I forget its Christian name, and what she-saint was its gossip.

You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street,--a baker, who has the
finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties,--sea dragons,
polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old
gentleman in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a week (he'll
remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the
foremost of the savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little
animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have
made an end of my say. My epistolary time is gone by when I could have
scribbled as long (I will not say as agreeable) as thine was to both of
us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets. But, in good earnest, I shall
be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of Old Sir Hugh. There is
nothing like inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows.

"He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran,
To the rough ocean and red restless sands."

I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the
equivalent vice. I must have _quid pro quo;_ or _quo pro quid_, as Tom
Woodgate would correct me. My service to him. C.L.

[This is the first letter to Hood, then a young man of twenty-five, and
assistant editor of the _London Magazine_. He was now staying at
Hastings, on his honeymoon, presumably, and, like the Lambs, near the
Priory.

"_Cucullus non facit Monachum_"--A "Lamb-pun." The Hood does not make
the monk.

"Old Lignum Janua"--the Tom Woodgate mentioned at the end of the letter,
a boatman at Hastings. Hood wrote some verses to him.

"My old New River." This passage was placed by Hood as the motto of his
verses "Walton Redivivus," in _Whims and Oddities_, 1826.

"Little churchling." This is Lamb's second description of Hollingdon
Rural. The third and best is in a later letter.

"There is nothing like inland murmurs." Lamb is here remembering
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey lines:--

With a sweet inland murmur.

In the _Elia_ essay "The O