you will not take it unkind if I decline my proposed visit to Cambridge
_for the present_. Perhaps I shall be able to take Cambridge _in my
way_, going or coming. I need not describe to you the expectations which
such an one as myself, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed
of a tour to the Lakes. Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth!
Coleridge! Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the devil! I will eat
snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess, confess, a _bite_.

P.S.--I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest of Lloyd to send
such an invitation! It shows his knowledge of _money_ and _time_. I
would be loth to think he meant

"Ironic satire sidelong sklented
On my poor pursie." [1]

For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that
I am not romance-bit about _Nature_. The earth and sea and sky (when all
is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, and
good liquors flow like the conduits at an old coronation, if they can
talk sensibly and feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon
the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings in the
purchase), nor his five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old Nabbs
the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as important to
me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world,--eye-pampering, but
satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres,
churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of
industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladles cheapening, gentlemen
behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles, George
Dyers (you may know them by their gait), lamps lit at night,
pastry-cooks' and silversmiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville,
noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchman at night, with bucks
reeling home drunk; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries of "Fire!"
and "Stop, thief!" inns of court, with their learned air, and halls, and
butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old book-stalls, Jeremy
Taylors, Burtons on Melancholy, and Religio Medicis on every stall.
These are thy pleasures, O London with-the-many-sins! O City abounding
in--, for these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang!

C. L.

[1] Burns.

XXXII.

TO MANNING.

_December_ 27, 1800.

At length George Dyer's phrenitis has come to a crisis; he is raging and
furiously mad. I waited upon the Heathen, Thursday