iment I am sure you would write a better than I
shall. But you see the original fault in me is that I choose to be in
such a place as this at all; that argues certainly a talent for dullness
which no situation nor intercourse of men could much improve. It is
true; I really do like to sit in this doleful place with a good fire, a
cat and dog on the rug, and an old woman in the kitchen. This is all my
live stock. The house is yet damp as last year; and the great event of
this winter is my putting up a trough round the eaves to carry off the
wet. There was discussion whether the trough should be of iron or of
zinc: iron dear and lasting; zinc the reverse. It was decided for iron;
and accordingly iron is put up.

Why should I not live in London and see the world? you say. Why then _I_
say as before, I don't like it. I think the dullness of country people
is better than the impudence of Londoners; and the fresh cold and wet of
our clay fields better than a fog that stinks _per se_; and this room of
mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty room in Charlotte St. If
you, Morton, and Alfred, were more in London, I should be there more; but
now there is but Spedding and Allen whom I care a straw about. I have
written two notes to Alfred to ask him just to notify his existence to
me; but you know he is obstinate on that point. I heard from Carlyle
that he (Alfred) had passed an evening at Chelsea much to C.'s delight;
who has opened the gates of his Valhalla to let Alfred in. {181}
Thackeray is at Malta, where I am told he means to winter. . . .

As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few books, and know
nothing of what is stirring in the literary world. I have read the Life
of Arnold of Rugby, who was a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke,
which do not add to, or detract from, what I knew and liked in him
before. I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps this
winter. . . . Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great humbug in deed,
and his books have plenty of it in word; but he had got together a vast
deal of what was not humbug from others; and, as far as I see, the old
philosophers are available now as much as two thousand years back.
Perhaps you will think that is not saying much. Don't suppose I think it
good philosophy in myself to keep here out of the world, and sport a
gentle Epicurism; I do not; I only follow something of a natural
inclination, and know not if I could do better