riter, in terms that warmed my
heart. Lord Ashburton (one of whose people wrote a notice in the
_Edinburgh_ which they have since publicly contradicted) also wrote to
me about it in just the same strain. And many others have done the like.

I am in great health and spirits and powdering away at Chuzzlewit, with
all manner of facetiousness rising up before me as I go on. As to news,
I have really none, saving that ---- (who never took any exercise in his
life) has been laid up with rheumatism for weeks past, but is now, I
hope, getting better. My little captain, as I call him--he who took me
out, I mean, and with whom I had that adventure of the cork soles--has
been in London too, and seeing all the lions under my escort. Good
heavens! I wish you could have seen certain other mahogany-faced men
(also captains) who used to call here for him in the morning, and bear
him off to docks and rivers and all sorts of queer places, whence he
always returned late at night, with rum-and-water tear-drops in his
eyes, and a complication of punchy smells in his mouth! He was better
than a comedy to us, having marvellous ways of tying his
pocket-handkerchief round his neck at dinner-time in a kind of jolly
embarrassment, and then forgetting what he had done with it; also of
singing songs to wrong tunes, and calling land objects by sea names, and
never knowing what o'clock it was, but taking midnight for seven in the
evening; with many other sailor oddities, all full of honesty,
manliness, and good temper. We took him to Drury Lane Theatre to see
"Much Ado About Nothing." But I never could find out what he meant by
turning round, after he had watched the first two scenes with great
attention, and inquiring "whether it was a Polish piece." . . .

On the 4th of April I am going to preside at a public dinner for the
benefit of the printers; and if you were a guest at that table, wouldn't
I smite you on the shoulder, harder than ever I rapped the well-beloved
back of Washington Irving at the City Hotel in New York!

You were asking me--I love to say asking, as if we could talk
together--about Maclise. He is such a discursive fellow, and so
eccentric in his might, that on a mental review of his pictures I can
hardly tell you of them as leading to any one strong purpose. But the
annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy comes off in May, and then I will
endeavour to give you some notion of him. He is a tremendous creature,
and might do anything