"I feel exactly as you do about our 'art[27],'but it comes over me
in a kind of rage every now and then, like * * * *, and then, if I
don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular,
uninterrupted love of writing, which you describe in your friend, I
do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid
of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a
great pain.

"I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme--for I am as
serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing. As to
matters here, they are high and mighty--but not for paper. It is
much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in
fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well
things go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders,
(every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in
turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,) there is as quiet
a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour
through Europe. There is nothing like habit in these things.

"I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless 'honour comes
unlocked for,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
the year.

"Yours, &c.

"Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
open all letters.

"Will you set me right about your curst 'Champs Elysees?'--are they
'es' or 'ees' for the adjective? I know nothing of French, being
all Italian. Though I can read and understand French, I never
attempt to speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the
Memoirs cut what you please."

[Footnote 26: Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the
"Detached Thoughts:"--"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore.
My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with
some vivacious person who hated bores especially,--Madame de S---- or
H----, for example. But I liked L * *; he was a jewel of a man, had he
been better set;--I don't mean _personally_, but less _tiresome_, for he
was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body.
Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta
in the twilight in summer, he made me go _before_, to pilot him; I am
absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this
pilotage was some narrow escape