be Suffolk. No new books (except a perfectly insane
one of Carlyle, {82} who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become
popular), nor new pictures, no music. A game at picquet of two hours
duration closes each day. But for that I might say with Titus--perdidi
diem. Oh Lord! all this is not told you that you may admire my
philosophic quietude, etc.; pray don't think that. I should travel like
you if I had the eyes to see that you have: but, as Goethe says, the eye
can but see what it brings with it the power of seeing. If anything I
had seen in my short travels had given me any new ideas worth having I
should travel more: as it is, I see your Italian lakes and cities in the
Picturesque Annuals as well as I should in the reality. You have a more
energetic, stirring, acquisitive, and capacious soul. I mean all this
seriously, believe me: but I won't say any more about it. Morton also is
a capital traveller: I wish he would keep notes of what he sees, and
publish them one day.

I must however tell you that I am becoming a Farmer! Can you believe in
this? I hope we shall both live to laugh over it together. When do you
mean to come back? Pray do not let so long a time elapse again without
writing to me: never mind a long letter: write something to say you are
alive and where. Rome certainly is nearer England than Naples: so
perhaps you are coming back. Bring Morton back with you. I will then go
to London and we will smoke together and be as merry as sandboys. We
will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding's forehead. People talk
of a war with America. Poor dear old England! she makes a gallant shew
in her old age. If Englishmen are to travel, I am glad that such as you
are abroad--good specimens of Englishmen: with the proper fierte about
them. The greater part are poor wretches that go to see oranges growing,
and hear Bellini for eighteen-pence. I hope the English are as proud and
disagreeable as ever. What an odd thing that the Italians like such
martial demonstrations as you describe--not at all odd, probably--their
spirit begins and goes off in noise and smoke. It is like all other
grand aspirations. So ---'s Epics crepitate in Sonnets. All I ask of
you is to write no Sonnets on what you see or hear--no sonnets can sound
well after Daddy Wordsworth, ---, etc., who have now succeeded in quite
spoiling one's pleasure in Milton's--and they are heavy things. The
words 'subjective and object