paired to my quarters to bathe and write letters. I scribbled one
to Madame D'Anville, full of antitheses and maxims, sure to charm her;
another to my mother, to prepare her for my arrival; and a third to Lord
Vincent, giving him certain commissions at Paris, which I had forgotten
personally to execute.

My pen is not that of a ready writer; and what with yawning, stretching,
admiring my rings, and putting pen to paper, in the intervals of these
more natural occupations, it was time to bathe and dress before my
letters were completed. I set off to Russelton's abode in high spirits,
and fully resolved to make the most of a character so original.

It was a very small room in which I found him; he was stretched in an
easy chair before the fire-place, gazing complacently at his feet,
and apparently occupied in any thing but listening to Sir Willoughby
Townsend, who was talking with great vehemence about politics and the
corn laws. Notwithstanding the heat of the weather, there was a small
fire on the hearth, which, aided by the earnestness of his efforts
to convince his host, put poor Sir Willoughby into a most intense
perspiration. Russelton, however, seemed enviably cool, and hung over
the burning wood like a cucumber on a hotbed. Sir Willoughby came to a
full stop by the window, and (gasping for breath) attempted to throw it
open.

"What are you doing? for Heaven's sake, what are you doing?" cried
Russelton, starting up; "do you mean to kill me?"

"Kill you!" said Sir Willoughby, quite aghast.

"Yes; kill me! is it not quite cold enough already in this d--d
seafaring place, without making my only retreat, humble as it is, a
theatre for thorough draughts? Have I not had the rheumatism in my left
shoulder, and the ague in my little finger, these last six months? and
must you now terminate my miserable existence at one blow, by opening
that abominable lattice? Do you think, because your great frame, fresh
from the Yorkshire wolds, and compacted of such materials, that one
would think, in eating your beeves, you had digested their hides into
skin--do you think, because your limbs might be cut up into planks for
a seventy-eight, and warranted water-proof without pitch, because of the
density of their pores--do you think, because you are as impervious as
an araphorostic shoe, that I, John Russelton, am equally impenetrable,
and that you are to let easterly winds play about my room like children,
begetting rheums and asthm