s old cordial looks will return, but
they are slow in clearing up. That is one of the features of this _our_
galley slavery, that peregrination ended makes things worse. I felt out
of water (with all the sea about me) at Hastings, and just as I had
learned to domiciliate there, I must come back to find a home which is
no home. I abused Hastings, but learned its value. There are spots,
inland bays, etc., which realise the notions of Juan Fernandez.

The best thing I lit upon by accident was a small country church (by
whom or when built unknown) standing bare and single in the midst of a
grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a
mile, only passages diverging from it thro' beautiful woods to so many
farm houses. There it stands, like the first idea of a church, before
parishioners were thought of, nothing but birds for its congregation, or
like a Hermit's oratory (the Hermit dead), or a mausoleum, its effect
singularly impressive, like a church found in a desert isle to startle
Crusoe with a home image; you must make out a vicar and a congregation
from fancy, for surely none come there. Yet it wants not its pulpit, and
its font, and all the seemly additaments of _our_ worship.

Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity, in the Quarterly,
Article, "Progress of Infidels [Infidelity]." I had not, nor have, seen
the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a
few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his
UNGUARDED expressions on the subject were to be collected--

But I love and respect Southey--and will not retort. I HATE HIS REVIEW,
and his being a Reviewer.

The hint he has dropped will knock the sale of the book on the head,
which was almost at a stop before.

Let it stop. There is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall.
You and I are something besides being Writers. Thank God.

Yours truly C.L.

[What the MS. was I do not know. Lamb recurs more fully to the
description of the little church--probably Hollingdon Rural, about three
miles north-west from the town--in later letters.

The thoughts in the second paragraph of this letter were amplified in
the _Elia_ essay "The Old Margate Hoy," in the _London Magazine_ for
July, 1823.

"Southey has attacked Elia." In an article in the _Quarterly_ for
January, 1823, in a review of a work by Gregoire on Deism in France,
under the title "