h knowing too, in a different way, a very
learned and very clever man (you will find half Dr. Arnold's letters
addressed to him), as full of crotchets as an egg is full of meat,
fond of disputing and contradicting, a clergyman living in the house
where Mrs. Trollope _was raised_, and very kind after his own
fashion. One thing that I should especially like would be that you
should see your first nightingale amongst our woody lanes. To be
sure, these winds can never last till then. Mr. ---- is coming here
on Sunday. He always brings rain or snow, and that will change the
weather. You are a person who ought to bring sunshine, and I suppose
you do more than metaphorically; for I remember that both times I
have had the happiness to see you--a summer day and a winter
day--were glorious. Heaven bless you, dear friend! May all the
pleasure ... return upon your own head! Even my little world is
charmed at the prospect of seeing you again. If you come to Reading
by the Great Western you could return later and make a longer day,
and yet be no longer from home.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, April 27, 1852.

How can I thank you half enough, dearest Mr. Fields, for all your
goodness! To write to me the very day after reaching Paris, to think
of me so kindly! It is what I never can repay. I write now not to
trouble you for another letter, but to remind you that, as soon as
possible after your return to England, I hope to see you and Mr. and
Mrs. Bennoch here. Heaven grant the spring may come to meet you! At
present I am writing in an east-wind, which has continued two months
and gives no sign of cessation. Professor Airy says it will continue
five weeks longer. Not a drop of rain has fallen in all that time.
We have frosts every night, the hedges are as bare as at Christmas,
flowers forget to blow, or if they put forth miserable, infrequent,
reluctant blossoms, have no heart, and I have only once heard the
nightingale in this place where they abound, and not yet seen a
swallow in the spot which takes name from their gatherings. It
follows, of course, that the rheumatism, covered by a glut of wet
weather, just upon the coming in of the new year, is fifty times
increased by the bitter season,--a season which has no parallel in
my recollection. I can hardly sit down when standin