ous friend
'_Les_ Hacqueville_s_.' However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy
of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that
Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so
you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and
indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice.
He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .

Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was
stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lushington) had
taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The
corrections are from Lushington. I do not understand why Lord H. does
not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something
from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great
Poverty. Her name is 'Fanny.' Ben might do much worse: some say he is
about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as
little as I can. 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne,' said Ste. Beuve one
day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires,
as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it
here in England ere 1879.

A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering,
where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A
long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who
looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note
of mine, 'Finished 10.30 p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.' Not on this
account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if
you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable--Cervantes--Shakespeare.
I mean that Chapter of the Colonel's return to Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn at
Kippletringan.

We are now reading 'Among the Spanish People,' by the Mr. Rose who wrote
'Untrodden Spain'; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with
some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose-
coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he
can't help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of
a Visit he pays to a _pueblo_ he calls Banos up the Sierra Morena: one
would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms
over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else 'les
Hacquevilles' will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and