some of them are answered in my daughter's letter to Miss E.H. I will,
however, myself reply to one or two at the risk of repeating what she
may have said. 1st. Mrs. Hemans has not sent us any tidings of her
movements and intentions since she left us; so I am unable to tell you
whether she mean to settle in Edinburgh or London.

[63] _Memoirs_, i. 391-8.

[64] Letter to Lord Lonsdale, Jan. 8. 1813: _Memoirs_, ii. 2.

She said she would write as soon as she could procure a frank. That
accommodation is, I suppose, more rare in Scotland than at this season
in our neighbourhood. I assure you the weather has been so unfavourable
to out-door amusements since you left us (not but that we have had a
sprinkling of fine and bright days), that little or no progress has been
made in the game of the Graces; and I fear that amusement must be
deferred till next summer, if we or anybody else are to see another. Mr.
Barber has dined with us once, and my sister and Mrs. Marshall, of
Halsteads, have seen his palace and grounds; but I cannot report upon
the general state of his temper. I believe he continues to be enchanted,
as far as decayed health will allow, with a Mr. Cooper, a clergyman who
has just come to the living of Hawkshend (about five miles from
Ambleside). Did I tell you that Professor Wilson, with his two sons and
daughter, have been, and probably still are, at Elleray? He heads the
gaieties of the neighbourhood, and has presided as steward at two
regattas. Do these employments come under your notions of action opposed
to contemplation? Why should they not? Whatever the high moralists may
say, the political economists will, I conclude, approve them as setting
capital afloat, and giving an impulse to manufacture and handicrafts;
but I speak of the improvement which may come thence to navigation and
nautical science. I have dined twice along with my brother (who left us
some time ago) in the Professor's company--at Mrs. Watson's, widow of
the Bp., at Calgarth, and at Mr. Bolton's. Poor Mr. B.! he must have
been greatly shocked at the fatal accident that put an end to his friend
Huskisson's earthly career. There is another acquaintance of mine also
recently gone--a person for whom I never had any love, but with whom I
had for a short time a good deal of intimacy. I mean Hazlitt, whose
death you may have seen announced in the papers. He was a man of
extraordinary acuteness, but perverse as Lord Byron himself; whose life
by Ga