-pardon-for,
pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place.
'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan
of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat,
beans, and clover--requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally
stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an
unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects--nor an uncommon one.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.
[21 March, 1841.]

DEAR FREDERIC TENNYSON,

I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning. You here
may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering
it. I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and
half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in. I supposed
you were alive: though I don't quite know why. De non existentibus et
non apparentibus eadem est ratio. I heard from Morton three months ago:
he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious
sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them. He wanted to
meet you: or at all events to hear of you. I wrote to him, but could
tell him nothing. I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have
gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8
Charlotte Street. . . . All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding
residing calmly in Lincoln's Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the
play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh
Review. Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their
chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their
travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln's Inn. As
to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to
London: and staying there but a short time when I do go. You, Morton,
Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only
Spedding is now to be found. Thackeray lives in Paris.

From this you may judge that I have no such sights to tell of as you
have. Neither do _mortaletti_ ever go off at Boulge: which is perhaps
not to be regretted. Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is
the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the
same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman
trundling by in their carts. As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will
not further descri