r at our head, looked more
like hopeful candidates for Bedlam than any thing else. My poor
father jumped, and clapped his hands, and kissed the letter, like a
child; as my mother says, "I am glad he has one gleam of sunshine,
at least;" he sadly wanted it, and I know nothing that could have
given him so much pleasure. Pray tell my aunt Kemble of it. I dare
say she will be glad to hear it. [My brother's tutor was Mr.
Peacock, the celebrated mathematician, well known at Cambridge as
one of the most eminent members of the university, and a private
tutor of whom all his pupils were deservedly proud; even those who,
like my brother John, cultivated the classical studies in
preference to the severe scientific subjects of which Mr. Peacock
was so illustrious a master. His praise of my brother was
regretful, though most ungrudging, for his own sympathy was
entirely with the intellectual pursuits for which Cambridge was
peculiarly famous, as the mathematical university, in
contradistinction to the classical tendency supposed to prevail at
this time among the teachers and students of Oxford.]

And now let me thank you for your last long letter, and the
detailed criticism it contained of my lines; if they oftener passed
through such a wholesome ordeal, I should probably scribble less
than I do. You ask after my novel of "Francoise de Foix," and my
translation of Sismondi's History; the former may, perhaps, be
finished some time these next six years; the latter is, and has
been, in Dr. Malkin's hands ever since I left Heath Farm. What you
say of scriptural subjects I do not always think true; for
instance, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept," does not
appear to me to have lost much beauty by Byron's poetical
paraphrase. We are really going to leave this pleasant place, and
take up our abode in Westminster; how I shall regret my dear little
room, full of flowers and books, and with its cheerful view. Enfin
il n'y faut plus penser. I have, luckily, the faculty of easily
accommodating myself to circumstances, and though sorry to leave my
little hermitage, I shall soon take root in the next place. With
all my dislike to moving, my great wish is to travel; but perhaps
that is not an absolute inconsistency, for what I wish is never to
remain long en