e, hereabouts the final charge of Oliver Cromwell
and his Ironsides, that day.

This {302a} Ground was opened, not irreverently or witht reluctance,
Saty 23 Septr 1842, to ascertain that fact, and render the
contemporary records legible. Peace henceforth to these old Dead.

Edwd Fitzgd (with date).

ADDISCOMBE FARM, CROYDON,
15 _Septr_, 1855.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

I have been here ever since the day you last heard of me; leading the
strangest life of absolute _Latrappism_; and often enough remembering
Farlingay and you. I live perfectly alone, and without speech at
all,--there being in fact nobody to speak to, except one austerely
punctual housemaid, who does her functions, like an eight-day clock,
generally without bidding. My wife comes out now and then to give the
requisite directions; but commonly withdraws again on the morrow, leaving
the monster to himself and his own ways. I have Books; a complete
Edition of _Voltaire_, {302b} for one Book, in which I read for _use_, or
for idleness oftenest,--getting into endless reflexions over it, mostly
of a sad and not very utterable nature. I find V. a 'gentleman,' living
in a world partly furnished with such; and that there are now almost no
'gentlemen' (not quite _none_): this is one great head of my reflexions,
to which there is no visible _tail_ or finish. I have also a Horse
(borrowed from my fat Yeoman friend, who is at sea bathing in Sussex);
and I go riding, at great lengths daily, over hill and dale: this I
believe is really the main good I am doing,--if in this either there be
much good. But it is a strange way of life to me, for the time; perhaps
not unprofitable: To let _Chaos_ say out its say, then, and one's Evil
Genius give one the very worst language he has, for a while. It is still
to last for a week or more. To day, for the first time, I ride back to
Chelsea, but mean to return hither on Monday. There is a great circle of
yellow light all the way from Shooter's Hill to Primrose Hill, spread
round my horizon every night, I see it while smoking my pipe before bed
(so bright, last night, it cast a visible shadow of me against the white
window-shutters); and this is all I have to do with London and its
_gases_ for a fortnight or more. My wife writes to me, there was an
awful jangle of bells last day she went home from this; a Quaker asked in
the railway, of some porter, 'Can thou tell me what these bells
mean?'--'Well, I suppose somethin