brief season; for he will not long be the ruler of the Gods."
It is needless to say that poor William the Fourth was the Jove of the
Whig Prometheus.]

As for myself, I rejoice that I am out of the present storm. "Suave mari
magno;" or, as your new Premier, if he be still Premier, construes. "It
is a source of melancholy satisfaction." I may, indeed, feel the effects
of the changes here, but more on public than private grounds. A Tory
Governor-General is not very likely to agree with me about the very
important law reforms which I am about to bring before the Council. But
he is not likely to treat me ill personally; or, if he does,

all ou ti khairon, en tod orthothe Belos,

["It shall be to his cost, so long as this bow carries true."]

as Philoctetes says. In a few months I shall have enough to enable me to
live, after my very moderate fashion, in perfect independence at home;
and whatever debts any Governor-General may choose to lay on me at
Calcutta shall be paid off, he may rely on it, with compound interest,
at Westminster.

My time is divided between public business and books. I mix with society
as little as I can. My spirits have not yet recovered,--I sometimes
think that they will never wholly recover,--the shock which they
received five months ago. I find that nothing soothes them so much as
the contemplation of those miracles of art which Athens has bequeathed
to us. I am really becoming, I hope not a pedant, but certainly an
enthusiast about classical literature. I have just finished a second
reading of Sophocles. I am now deep in Plato, and intend to go right
through all his works. His genius is above praise. Even where he is most
absurd,--as, for example, in the Cratylus,--he shows an acuteness, and
an expanse of intellect, which is quite a phenomenon by itself. The
character of Socrates does not rise upon me. The more I read about him,
the less I wonder that they poisoned him. If he had treated me as he
is said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and Gorgias, I could never
have forgiven him.

Nothing has struck me so much in Plato's dialogues as the raillery.
At college, somehow or other, I did not understand or appreciate it. I
cannot describe to you the way in which it now tickles me. I often sink
forward on my huge old Marsilius Ficinus in a fit of laughter. I should
say that there never was a vein of ridicule so rich, at the same time so
delicate. It is superior to Voltaire's; nay, to Pascal's