ear Miss Wordsworth,--I had just written the above endearing words when
Monkhouse tapped me on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose
pie, which I was not bird of that sort enough to decline. Mrs. Monkhouse,
I am most happy to say, is better Mary has been tormented with a
rheumatism, which is leaving her, I am suffering from the festivities of
the season. I wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. I have played
the experimental philosopher on it, that's certain. Willy shall be
welcome to a mince-pie and a bout at commerce whenever he comes. He was
in our eye. I am glad you liked my new year's speculations; everybody
likes them, except the author of the "Pleasures of Hope." Disappointment
attend him! How I like to be liked, and _what I do_ to be liked! They
flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all the minor reviews; the
Quarterlies hold aloof. But they must come into it in time, or their
leaves be waste paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. Two special
things are worth seeing at Cambridge,--a portrait of Cromwell at Sidney,
and a better of Dr. Harvey (who found out that blood was red) at Dr.
Davy's; you should see them. Coleridge is pretty well; I have not seen,
him, but hear often of him, from Allsop, who sends me hares and
pheasants twice a week; I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have
almost forgotten butcher's meat as plebeian. Are you not glad the cold
is gone? I find winters not so agreeable as they used to be "when winter
bleak had charms forme," I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those
snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth-cakes!

Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in town. You do not know the
Watfords in Trampington Street. They are capital people. Ask anybody you
meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I 'll hold you a wager
they'll say Mrs. Smith; she broke down two benches in Trinity
Gardens,--one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a
litigation between the Societies as to repairing it. In warm weather,
she retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of
the years from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in a room
with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draught, which
gives her slenderer friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the market
every morning at ten cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge
poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump.

Having now answered most of the points contained