to the Lady.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

LOWESTOFT: _July_ 27 [1866].

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day.

I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and
you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in
Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of
Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and
Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to
share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or
Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so!

I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till
your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his
Kinsfolk.

A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four
of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For,
having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income
tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls'
made upon him as Shareholder.

At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri.

So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one
third bigger than it should be.

All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now
and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a
hopeless Process, I believe all the while.

Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two
honest Fellows to deal with.

We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these
Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.

With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital
Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No
one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious
during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I
never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for
elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic
Aphorisms, observed long ago.

When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my
dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses)
and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in
one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will l