elections: but Taylor is
particularly liable to injury on this score. What a man he is! He has
such a knowledge of the nature of man, and such powers of expressing its
properties, that I sometimes feel as if he had had some exact counterpart
of my own individual character under his eye, when he lays open the
depths of the heart, or traces some sin to its root. The eye of his
portrait expresses this keen intuition: and I think I should less like to
have stood with a lie on my tongue before him, than before any other I
know of. . . .

I beg you to give my best remembrances to your lady, who may be always
sure that in all I wish of well for you, she is included: so that I take
less care to make mention of her separately. . . .

WHERSTEAD, _July_ 4, 1835.

DEAR ALLEN,

. . . My brother John's wife, always delicate, has had an attack this
year, which she can never get over: and while we are all living in this
house cheerfully, she lives in separate rooms, can scarcely speak to us,
or see us: and bears upon her cheek the marks of death. She has shewn
great Christian dignity all through her sickness: was the only cheerful
person when they supposed she could not live: and is now very composed
and happy. You say sometimes how like things are to dreams: or, as I
think, to the shifting scenes of a play. So does this place seem to me.
All our family, except my mother, are collected here: all my brothers and
sisters, with their wives, husbands, and children: sitting at different
occupations, or wandering about the grounds and gardens, discoursing each
their separate concerns, but all united into one whole. The weather is
delightful: and when I see them passing to and fro, and hear their
voices, it is like scenes of a play. I came here only yesterday. I have
much to tell you of: I mean, much in my small way: I will keep all till I
see you, for I don't know with what to begin in a letter. . . .

Edgeworth introduced me to his wife and sister-in-law, who are very
handsome Spanish ladies, seemingly of excellent sense. The wife is the
gentler, and more feminine: and the sister more regularly handsome, and
vivacious. I think that he is a very remarkable man: and I like him more
the more I see of him.

What you say of Tennyson and Wordsworth is not, I think, wholly just. I
don't think that a man can turn himself so directly to the service of
morality, unless naturally inclined: I think Wordsworth's is a natural
bias that