ularly in a place where there are not 'ten
righteous.' As to nobility--in England none are strictly noble but
peers, not even peers' sons, though titled by courtesy; nor knights
of the garter, unless of the peerage, so that Castlereagh himself
would hardly pass through a foreign herald's ordeal till the death
of his father.

"The snow is a foot deep here. There is a theatre, and opera,--the
Barber of Seville. Balls begin on Monday next. Pay the porter for
never looking after the gate, and ship my chattels, and let me
know, or let Castelli let me know, how my law-suits go on--but fee
him only in proportion to his success. Perhaps we may meet in the
spring yet, if you are for England. I see H * * has got into a
scrape, which does not please me; he should not have gone so deep
among those men without calculating the consequences. I used to
think myself the most imprudent of all among my friends and
acquaintances, but almost begin to doubt it.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 354. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, January 31. 1820.

"You would hardly have been troubled with the removal of my
furniture, but there is none to be had nearer than Bologna, and I
have been fain to have that of the rooms which I fitted up for my
daughter there in the summer removed here. The expense will be at
least as great of the land carriage, so that you see it was
necessity, and not choice. Here they get every thing from Bologna,
except some lighter articles from Forli or Faenza.

"If Scott is returned, pray remember me to him, and plead laziness
the whole and sole cause of my not replying:--dreadful is the
exertion of letter-writing. The Carnival here is less boisterous,
but we have balls and a theatre. I carried Bankes to both, and he
carried away, I believe, a much more favourable impression of the
society here than of that of Venice,--recollect that I speak of the
_native_ society only.

"I am drilling very hard to learn how to double a shawl, and should
succeed to admiration if I did not always double it the wrong side
out; and then I sometimes confuse and bring away two, so as to put
all the Servanti out, besides keeping their _Servite_ in the cold
till every body can get back their property. But it is a dreadfully
moral p