t Windsor.
A following my dear.

I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears. The
presence of my wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my
house. I begin to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent's
Canal, of the razors up-stairs, of the chemist's down the street, of
poisoning myself at Mrs. ----'s table, of hanging myself upon the
pear-tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself to
death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage, of falling
under the feet of cab-horses in the New Road, of murdering Chapman &
Hall and becoming great in story (SHE must hear something of me
then--perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?), of turning
Chartist, of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and saving Her
by my single hand--of being anything but what I have been, and doing
anything but what I have done. Your distracted friend, C. D." The wild
derangement of asterisks in every shape and form, with which this
incoherence closed, cannot here be given.

Some ailments which dated from an earlier period in his life made
themselves felt in the spring of the year, as I remember, and increased
horse-exercise was strongly recommended to him. "I find it will be
positively necessary to go, for five days in the week, at least," he
wrote to me in March, "on a perfect regimen of diet and exercise, and am
anxious therefore not to delay treating for a horse." We were now in
consequence, when he was not at the sea-side, much on horseback in
suburban lanes and roads; and the spacious garden of his new house was
also turned to healthful use at even his busiest times of work. I mark
this, too, as the time when the first of his ravens took up residence
there; and as the beginning of disputes with two of his neighbors about
the smoking of the stable-chimney, which his groom Topping, a highly
absurd little man with flaming red hair, so complicated by secret
devices of his own, meant to conciliate each complainant alternately and
having the effect of aggravating both, that law-proceedings were only
barely avoided. "I shall give you," he writes, "my latest report of the
chimney in the form of an address from Topping, made to me on our way
from little Hall's at Norwood the other night, where he and Chapman and
I had been walking all day, while Topping drove Kate, Mrs. Hall, and her
sisters, to Dulwich. Topping had been regaled upon the premises, and was
just drunk