&c. &c. I had written to you again, but burnt
the letter, because I began to think you seriously hurt at my
indolence, and did not know how the buffoonery it contained might
be taken. In the mean time, I have yours, and all is well.

"I had given over all hopes of yours. By-the-by, my 'grata
superveniet' should be in the present tense; for I perceive it
looks now as if it applied to this present scrawl reaching you,
whereas it is to the receipt of thy Kilkenny epistle that I have
tacked that venerable sentiment.

"Poor Whitbread died yesterday morning,--a sudden and severe loss.
His health had been wavering, but so fatal an attack was not
apprehended. He dropped down, and I believe never spoke
afterwards. I perceive Perry attributes his death to Drury Lane,--a
consolatory encouragement to the new Committee. I have no doubt
that * *, who is of a plethoric habit, will be bled immediately;
and as I have, since my marriage, lost much of my paleness,
and--'horresco referens' (for I hate even _moderate_ fat)--that
happy slenderness, to which, when I first knew you, I had attained,
I by no means sit easy under this dispensation of the Morning
Chronicle. Every one must regret the loss of Whitbread; he was
surely a great and very good man.

"Paris is taken for the second time. I presume it, for the future,
will have an anniversary capture. In the late battles, like all the
world, I have lost a connection,--poor Frederick Howard, the best
of his race. I had little intercourse, of late years, with his
family, but I never saw or heard but good of him. Hobhouse's
brother is killed. In short, the havoc has not left a family out of
its tender mercies.

"Every hope of a republic is over, and we must go on under the old
system. But I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the
luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh is
only a proof of the little value the gods set upon prosperity, when
they permit such * * * s as he and that drunken corporal, old
Blucher, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington
should be excepted. He is a man,--and the Scipio of our Hannibal.
However, he may thank the Russian frosts, which destroyed the
_real elite_ of the French army, for the successes of Waterloo.

"La! Moore--how you