en interesting to a man of your
sensibility, and perhaps may still continue to be so. It would be highly
gratifying to me to suppose that even in a single instance the manner in
which I have treated these general topics should afford you any
pleasure; but such a hope does not influence me upon the present
occasion; in truth I do not feel it. Besides, I am convinced that there
must be many things in this collection which may impress you with an
unfavourable idea of my intellectual powers. I do not say this with a
wish to degrade myself, but I am sensible that this must be the case,
from the different circles in which we have moved, and the different
objects with which we have been conversant.

Being utterly unknown to you as I am, I am well aware that if I am
justified in writing to you at all, it is necessary my letter should be
short; but I have feelings within me, which I hope will so far show
themselves, as to excuse the trespass which I am afraid I shall make.

In common with the whole of the English people, I have observed in your
public character a constant predominance of sensibility of heart.
Necessitated as you have been from your public situation to have much to
do with men in bodies, and in classes, and accordingly to contemplate
them in that relation, it has been your praise that you have not thereby
been prevented from looking upon them as individuals, and that you have
habitually left your heart open to be influenced by them in that
capacity. This habit cannot but have made you dear to poets; and I am
sure that if, since your first entrance into public life, there has been
a single true poet living in England, he must have loved you.

But were I assured that I myself had a just claim to the title of a
poet, all the dignity being attached to the word which belongs to it, I
do not think that I should have ventured for that reason to offer these
volumes to you; at present it is solely on account of two poems in the
second volume, the one entitled 'The Brothers,' and the other 'Michael,'
that I have been emboldened to take this liberty.

It appears to me that the most calamitous effect which has followed the
measures which have lately been pursued in this country, is, a rapid
decay of the domestic affections among the lower orders of society. This
effect the present rulers of this country are not conscious of, or they
disregard it. For many years past, the tendency of society, amongst
almost all the nations