turned home, the sun
sinking red.

(_A pen and ink sketch_.)

This is not like Pool-a-Phooka.

_To F. Tennyson_.

IRELAND, _August_ 31/43.

DEAR FREDERIC,

. . . I set sail from Dublin to-morrow night, bearing the heartfelt
regrets of all the people of Ireland with me.

Where is my dear old Alfred? Sometimes I intend to send him a quotation
from a book: but do not perform the same. Are you packing up for Italy?
I had a pleasant week with Edgeworth. He farms, and is a justice: and
goes to sleep on the sofa of evenings. At odd moments he looks into
Spinoza and Petrarch. People respect him very much in those parts. Old
Miss Edgeworth is wearing away: she has a capital bright soul which even
now shines quite youthfully through her faded carcase. . . . I had the
weakest dream the other night that ever was dreamt. I thought I saw
Thomas Frognall Dibdin--and that was all. Tell this to Alfred. Carlyle
talks of coming to see Naseby: but I leave him to suit the weather to his
taste.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE,
_Sunday_, _Dec_. 10/1843.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Either you wrote me word yourself, or some one told me, that you meant to
winter at Florence. So I shall direct to the Poste Restante there. You
see I am not settled at the Florence of Suffolk, called Ipswich, yet: but
I am perhaps as badly off; being in this most dull country house quite
alone; a grey mist, that seems teeming with half formed snow, all over
the landscape before my windows. It is also Sunday morning: ten of the
clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread
and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in
humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the
country. So you will be able exactly to measure my aptitude and fullness
for letter writing by the quantity written now, before I bolt off for
hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I always put on my thickest great coat to
go to our Church in: as fungi grow in great numbers about the communion
table. And now, to turn away from Boulge, I must tell you that I went up
to London a month ago to see old Thackeray, who had come there to have
his eyes doctored. I stayed with him ten days and we were as usual
together. Alfred came up 'in transitu' from Boxley to Cheltenham; he
looked, and said he was, ill: I have never seen him so hopeless: and I am
really anxious to know how he is. . . . I remember the days of the
summer when you and