andchildren. Francis
will settle at home and be a good country gentleman and his own
agent--to Mrs. E.'s and all our inexpressible comfort and support,
also for the good of the country, as a resident landlord and
magistrate _much_ needed. As _he_ is at home I can be spared from
the rent-receiving business, etc., and leaving him with his mother,
Aunt Mary and Lucy, I can indulge myself by accepting an
often-urged invitation from my two sisters Fanny and Honora, to
spend some months with them in London. I have chosen to go at this
quiet time of year, as I particularly wish not to encounter the
bustle and dissipation and lionizing of London. For tho' I am such
a minnikin lion now, and so old, literally without teeth or claws,
still there be, that might rattle at the grate to make me get up
and come out and stand up to play tricks for them--and this I am
not able or inclined to do. I am afraid I should growl--I never
could be as good-humored as Sir Walter Scott used to be, when
rattled for and made to "come out and stand on his hind legs," as
he used to describe it, and then go quietly to sleep again.

I shall use my privilege of seventy-two--rising seventy-three--and
shall keep in my comfortable den: I will not go out. "Nobody asked
you, ma'am," to play Lion, may perhaps be said or sung to me, and I
shall not be sorry nor mortified by not being asked to exhibit, but
heartily happy to be with my sisters and their family and family
friends--_all_ for which I go. Knowing my own mind very well, I
speak the mere plain truth. I shall return home to Edgeworthstown
before the London _season_, as it is called, commences, _i.e._, by
the end of March or at the very beginning of April.

This is all I have for the present to tell you of my dear self, or
of our family doings or plannings. You see I depend _enough_ on the
sincerity of your curiosity and sympathy, and I thank you in kind
for all you have been so affectionately good to tell me of
yourselves.

I have been lately reading Thibeaudeau's ten volumes of the History
of Napoleon--_Le Consulat et l'Empire_--immediately after having
read the life of Washington by Sparks, a book which I think I
mentioned to you had been sent to me by an American Jewess of
Philadelphia, Miss Gratz. A most valuable present-