y observe that it sounds very like it. He sent
us a prodigious quantity of game while he was away--a brace of wild
ducks, a brace of black grouse, a brace of partridges, ditto of
snipes, ditto of curlews, and a large salmon. If you were to ask Mr.
Weightman's opinion of my character just now, he would say that at
first he thought me a cheerful chatty kind of body, but that on
farther acquaintance he found me of a capricious changeful temper,
never to be reckoned on. He does not know that I have regulated my
manner by his--that I was cheerful and chatty so long as he was
respectful, and that when he grew almost contemptuously familiar I
found it necessary to adopt a degree of reserve which was not
natural, and therefore was very painful to me. I find this reserve
very convenient, and consequently I intend to keep it up.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_November_ 12_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR NELL,--You will excuse this scrawled sheet of paper,
inasmuch as I happen to be out of that article, this being the only
available sheet I can find in my desk. I have effaced one of the
delectable portraitures, but have spared the others--lead pencil
sketches of horse's head, and man's head--being moved to that act of
clemency by the recollection that they are not the work of my hand,
but of the sacred fingers of his reverence William Weightman. You
will discern that the eye is a little too elevated in the horse's
head, otherwise I can assure you it is no such bad attempt. It shows
taste and something of an artist's eye. The fellow had no copy for
it. He sketched it, and one or two other little things, when he
happened to be here one evening, but you should have seen the vanity
with which he afterwards regarded his productions. One of them
represented the flying figure of Fame inscribing his own name on the
clouds.

'Mrs. Brook and I have interchanged letters. She expressed herself
pleased with the style of my application--with its candour, etc. (I
took care to tell her that if she wanted a showy, elegant,
fashionable personage, I was not the man for her), but she wants
music and singing. I can't give her music and singing, so of course
the negotiation is null and void. Being once up, however, I don't
mean to sit down t