to
settle the point immediately is that we may make another use of that
Saturday night.

Assured of your generous feeling I make no apology for troubling you. A
sum of money, got together by these means, will insure to literature (I
will take good care of that) a proper expression of itself in the
bestowal of an essentially literary appointment, not only now but
henceforth. Much is to be done, time presses, and the least added the
better.

I have addressed a counterpart of this letter to Mr. Francis Robinson,
to whom perhaps you will communicate the bill.

Faithfully yours always.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Cowden Clarke.]

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _Monday Evening,
July 22nd, 1848._

MY DEAR MRS. CLARKE,

I have no energy whatever, I am very miserable. I loathe domestic
hearths. I yearn to be a vagabond. Why can't I marry Mary?[38] Why have I
seven children--not engaged at sixpence a-night apiece, and dismissable
for ever, if they tumble down, not taken on for an indefinite time at a
vast expense, and never,--no never, never,--wearing lighted candles
round their heads.[39] I am deeply miserable. A real house like this is
insupportable, after that canvas farm wherein I was so happy. What is a
humdrum dinner at half-past five, with nobody (but John) to see me eat
it, compared with _that_ soup, and the hundreds of pairs of eyes that
watched its disappearance? Forgive this tear.[40] It is weak and foolish,
I know.

Pray let me divide the little excursional excesses of the journey among
the gentlemen, as I have always done before, and pray believe that I
have had the sincerest pleasure and gratification in your co-operation
and society, valuable and interesting on all public accounts, and
personally of no mean worth, nor held in slight regard.

You had a sister once, when we were young and happy--I think they called
her Emma. If she remember a bright being who once flitted like a vision
before her, entreat her to bestow a thought upon the "Gas" of departed
joys. I can write no more.

Y. G.[41] THE (DARKENED) G. L. B.[42]

P.S.--"I am completely _blase_--literally used up. I am dying for
excitement. Is it possible that nobody can suggest anything to make my
heart beat violently, my hair stand on end--but no!"

Where did I hear those words (so truly applicable to my for