Child was that of a Man: but perhaps not the less
right for all that. As to the Countenance, he said that scarce any Man's
Face could look so grave and rapt as a Baby's could at times. He once
said of his own Child's, 'He was a whole hour this morning worshipping
the Sunshine playing on the Bedpost.' He never writes Letters or
Journals: but I hope People will be found to remember some of the things
he has said as naturally as your Mother wrote them. {24}

_To W. H. Thompson_.

MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_July_ 15/61.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I was very glad to hear of you again. You need never take it to
Conscience, not answering my Letters, further than that I really do want
to hear you are well, and where you are, and what doing, from time to
time. I have absolutely nothing to tell about myself, not having moved
from this place since I last wrote, unless to our Sea coast at Aldbro',
whither I run, or sail, from time to time to idle with the Sailors in
their Boats or on their Beach. I love their childish ways: but they too
degenerate. As to reading, my Studies have lain chiefly in some back
Volumes of the New Monthly Magazine and some French Memoirs. Trench was
good enough to send me a little unpublished Journal by his Mother: a very
pretty thing indeed. I suppose he did this in return for one or two
Papers on Oriental Literature which Cowell had sent me from India, and
which I thought might interest Trench. I am very glad to hear old
Spedding is really getting _his_ Share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it
will be half as good as the '_Evenings_,' where Spedding was in the
_Passion_ which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.

I have not seen his Paper on English Hexameters {25} which you tell me
of: but I will now contrive to do so. I, however, believe in them: and I
think the ever-recurring attempts that way show there is some ground for
such belief. To be sure, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Quadrature of
the Circle, have had at least as many Followers. . . .

It was finding some Bits of Letters and Poems of old Alfred's that made
me wish to restore those I gave you to the number, as marking a by-gone
time to me. That they will not so much do to you, who did not happen to
save them from the Fire when the Volumes of 1842 were printing. But I
would waive that if you found it good or possible to lay them up in
Trinity Library in the Closet with Milton's! Otherwise, I would still
look at t