m.

Poor Sir Walter Scott is going back to Scotland by sea tomorrow. All
hope is over; and he has a restless wish to die at home. He is many
thousand pounds worse than nothing. Last week he was thought to be so
near his end that some people went, I understand, to sound Lord Althorp
about a public funeral. Lord Althorp said, very like himself, that if
public money was to be laid out, it would be better to give it to the
family than to spend it in one day's show. The family, however, are said
to be not ill off.

I am delighted to hear of your proposed tour, but not so well pleased
to be told that you expect to be bad correspondents during your stay at
Welsh inns. Take pens and ink with you, if you think that you shall find
none at the Bard's Head, or the Glendower Arms. But it will be too
bad if you send me no letters during a tour which will furnish so many
subjects. Why not keep a journal, and minute down in it all that you
see and hear? and remember that I charge you, as the venerable circle
charged Miss Byron, to tell me of every person who "regards you with an
eye of partiality."

What can I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady
Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:--Henry Masterton, three
volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it in,
next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and
deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed
in drab; and read it together at the curling hour.

My article on Mirabeau will be out in the forthcoming number. I am not
a good judge of my own compositions, I fear; but I think that it will be
popular. A Yankee has written to me to say that an edition of my works
is about to be published in America with my life prefixed, and that he
shall be obliged to me to tell him when I was born, whom I married,
and so forth. I guess I must answer him slick right away. For, as the
judicious poet observes,

Though a New England man lolls back in his chair,
With a pipe in his mouth, and his legs in the air,
Yet surely an Old England man such as I
To a kinsman by blood should be civil and spry.

How I run on in quotation! But, when I begin to cite the verses of our
great writers, I never can stop. Stop I must, however.

Yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 18, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I have heard from Napier. He speaks rapturously of my
article on Dumont, [Dumont