elieve I should like
it all the better for its being a little fatherless bastard which I have
picked up in the streets, and made clean and comfortable. Yet, if your
friend tells you it is by G. I shall be glad you should possess it. Any
how, never part with it but to me.

I must tell you my friend Laurence still persists it is not by
Gainsborough: but I have thrown him quite overboard. Oh the comfort of
independent self confidence! Said Laurence also observed that
Gainsborough was the Goldsmith of Painters: which is perhaps true. I
should like to know if he would know an original of Goldsmith, if I read
something to him. He is a nice fellow this Laurence by the way.

Our prospect of going down to Suffolk this year is much on the wane: the
Doctor has desired that Lusia should remain in town. Though I should
like much to see you and others, yet I am on the whole glad that my
sisters should stay here, where they are likely to be better off. I
shall stay with them, as I am of use. I may however run down one day to
give you a look. I wish you would enquire and let me know how Mr. Jenney
{96} is: he was not well when my Father was in Suffolk. Only _don't ask
himself_: he hates that. And now farewell. This is a long letter: but
look at it by way of notice when the picture comes to you. If it does
not come on Monday don't be angry: but it probably will.

BRIGHTON, _Dec_. 29, 1841.

MY DEAR BARTON,

The account you give of my old Squire 'that he is in a poorish way' does
not satisfy me: and I want you to ask Mr. Jones the surgeon, whom you
know, and who used to attend on the Squire,--to ask him, I say, how that
Squire is. He has been ill for the last two or three winters, and may
not be worse now than before. He is one of our oldest friends: and
though he and I have not very much in common, he is a part of my country
of England, and involved in the very idea of the quiet fields of Suffolk.
He is the owner of old Bredfield House in which I was born--and the
seeing him cross the stiles between Hasketon and Bredfield, and riding
with his hounds over the lawn, is among the scenes in that novel called
The Past which dwell most in my memory. What is the difference between
what has been, and what never has been, _none_? At the same time this
Squire, so hardy, is indignant at the idea of being ill or laid up: so
one must inquire of him by some roundabout means. . . .

We had a large party here last night: Horace