possess) to recognize the consummate
power predominating in the tranquil Beauty of Greek Sculpture. I think
Beethoven is rather spasmodically, than sustainedly, grand.

Well, I must take to my third side after all, which I meant to have
spared you, partly because of this transparent paper, and my more than
usually bad writing. I came down here four days ago: and have this
morning sketched for you the enclosed, the common that lies before my
Bedroom window, as I pulled up my blind, and opened my shutter upon it,
early this morning. I never draw now, never drew well; but this may
serve to give a hint of poor old dewy England to you who are, I suppose,
beginning to be dried up in the South. W. Browne, my host, tells me that
your Grimsby Rail is looking up greatly, and certainly will pay well,
sooner or later: which I devoutly hope it may.

I do not think I told you my Father was dead; like poor old Sedley in
Thackeray's Vanity Fair, all his Coal schemes at an end. He died in
March, after an illness of three weeks, saying 'that engine works well'
(meaning one of his Colliery steam engines) as he lay in the stupor of
Death. I was in Shropshire at the time, with my old friend Allen; but I
went home to Suffolk just to help to lay him in the Grave.

Pray do send me your Poems, one and all: I should like very much to talk
them over with you, however much you might resent me, who am no Poet,
presuming to advise you who as certainly are one. That you ought to
publish some of these Poems (as I think, somewhat condensed, or, at
least, curtailed) I am more and more sure, having seen the very great
pleasure, and deep interest, some of them have caused when read to
persons of very different talents and tastes.

And now, my dear Frederic, farewell for the present. Remember, you
cannot write to me too often, as far as I am concerned.

Don't write Politics--I agree with you beforehand.

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE, _August_ 10/52.

MY DEAR DONNE,

It is very good of you to write to me, so much as you have to do. I am
much obliged to you also for taking the trouble to go and see my Mother.
You may rely on it she feels as pleased with your company as she says she
is: I do not know any one who has the power of being so agreeable to her
as yourself.

And dear old Thackeray is really going to America! I must fire him a
letter of farewell.

The Cowells are at Ipswich, and I get over to see them, etc. They talk
of coming