ill, entailing this property (which
seem'd entangled enough already) to the heirs of his body, that should
not be born of his wife; for it seems by the law in India, natural
children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer process,
here removed by Certiorari from the native Courts; and the question is,
whether I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it
to the Supreme Sessions at Bangalore? (which I understand I can, or
plead a hearing before the Privy Council here). As it involves all the
little property of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take the fittest
steps, and what may be least expensive. Pray assist me, for the case is
so embarrassed, that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney
thinks there is a case like it in Chapt. 170, sect. 5, in Fearne's
Contingent Remainders. Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and
let me have the result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of
the husband to alienate....

I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings.

A few lines of verse for a young friend's Album (six will be enough). M.
Burney will tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six
lines--make 'em eight--signed Barry C----. They need not be very good,
as I chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously
obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the world, when
St. Paul prophesied that women should be "headstrong, lovers of their
own wills, having Albums." I fled hither to escape the Albumean
persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours, when
the daughter of the next house came in with a friend's Album to beg a
contribution, and the following day intimated she had one of her own.
Two more have sprung up since. If I take the wings of the morning and
fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will Albums be. New
Holland has Albums. But the age is to be complied with. M.B. will tell
you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive
cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as
that can not be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your
deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial.
And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a
monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to
touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Albums, I
have become a byword