to be perfectly made up as to the certainty of Catholic
Emancipation having come at last. The feeling of approbation among the
barristers is all but unanimous. The quiet townspeople here, as far as I
can see, are very well contented. As soon as I arrived I was asked by
my landlady how things had gone. I told her the division, which I had
learned from Brougham at Garstang. She seemed surprised at the majority.
I asked her if she was against the measure. "No; she only wished
that all Christians would live in peace and charity together." A very
sensible speech, and better than one at least of the members for the
county ever made in his life.

I implore you above everything, my dear Father, to keep up your health
and spirits. Come what may, the conveniences of life, independence,
our personal respectability, and the exercise of the intellect and the
affections, we are almost certain of retaining; and everything else is a
mere superfluity, to be enjoyed, but not to be missed. But I ought to be
ashamed of reading you a lecture on qualities which you are so much more
competent to teach than myself.

Ever yours very affectionately

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

50 Great Ormond Street, London:

January 25, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I send off by the mail of to-day an article on
Southey,--too long, I fear, to meet your wishes, but as short as I could
make it.

There were, by the bye, in my last article a few omissions made, of no
great consequence in themselves; the longest, I think, a paragraph of
twelve or fourteen lines. I should scarcely have thought this worth
mentioning, as it certainly by no means exceeds the limits of that
editorial prerogative which I most willingly recognise, but that the
omissions seemed to me, and to one or two persons who had seen the
article in its original state, to be made on a principle which,
however sound in itself, does not I think apply to compositions of this
description. The passages omitted were the most pointed and ornamented
sentences in the review. Now, for high and grave works, a history for
example, or a system of political or moral philosophy, Doctor Johnson's
rule,--that every sentence which the writer thinks fine ought to be cut
out,--is excellent. But periodical works like ours, which unless they
strike at the first reading are not likely to strike at all, whose whole
life is a month or two, may, I think, be allowed to be sometimes even
viciously florid. Probably, in est