t return unless
climate has an effect on the human frame which I cannot possibly believe
or comprehend. The safe resolution is, to try no foolish experiments,
but make myself as easy as I can, without suffering myself to be vexed
about what I cannot help. If I sit on the deck and look at Vesuvius, it
will be all I ought to think of.

Having mentioned John the Painter, I may add that it was in this town of
Portsmouth that the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to death by Felton, a
fanatic of the same kind with the Incendiary, though perpetrator of a
more manly crime. This monster-breeding age can afford both Feltons and
John Aitkens in abundance. Every village supplies them, while in fact a
deep feeling of the coarsest selfishness furnishes the ruling motive,
instead of an affectation of public spirit--that hackneyed affectation
of patriotism, as like the reality as a Birmingham halfpenny to a
guinea.

The girls, I regret to see, have got a senseless custom of talking
politics in all weathers and in all sorts of company. This can do no
good, and may give much offence. Silence can offend no one, and there
are pleasanter or less irritating subjects to talk of. I gave them both
a hint of this, and bid them both remember they were among ordinary
strangers. How little young people reflect what they may win or lose by
a smart reflection imprudently fired off at a venture!

Mr. Barrow of the Admiralty came and told us the whole fleet, _Barham_
excepted, were ordered to the North Sea to help to bully the King of
Holland, and that Captain Pigot, whose motions are of more importance to
us than those of the whole British Navy, sails, as certainly as these
things can be prophesied, on Thursday, 27th October.

_October_ 26.--Here we still are, fixed by the inexorable wind.
Yesterday we asked a few old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, and two or
three others, to tea and talk. I engaged in a new novel, by Mr.
Smith,[480] called _New Forest_. It is written in an old style,
calculated to meet the popular ideas--somewhat like "Man as he is
not"[481] and that class. The author's opinions seem rather to sit loose
upon him and to be adopted for the nonce and not very well brought out.
His idea of a hero is an American philosopher with all the affected
virtues of a Republican which no man believes in.

This is very tiresome--not to be able to walk abroad for an instant,
but to be kept in this old house which they call "The Fountain," a
mansi