e continual whispers of the plague,
against apprehensions of contagion. Besides which, apprehension
would not prevent it; and then I am still in love, and 'forty
thousand' fevers should not make me stir before my minute, while
under the influence of that paramount delirium. Seriously
speaking, there is a malady rife in the city--a dangerous one, they
say. However, mine did not appear so, though it was not pleasant.

"This is Passion-week--and twilight--and all the world are at
vespers. They have an eternal churching, as in all Catholic
countries, but are not so bigoted as they seem to be in Spain.

"I don't know whether to be glad or sorry that you are leaving
Mayfield. Had I ever been at Newstead during your stay there,
(except during the winter of 1813-14, when the roads were
impracticable,) we should have been within hail, and I should like
to have made a giro of the Peak with you. I know that country well,
having been all over it when a boy. Was you ever in Dovedale? I can
assure you there are things in Derbyshire as noble as Greece or
Switzerland. But you had always a lingering after London, and I
don't wonder at it. I liked it as well as any body, myself, now and
then.

"Will you remember me to Rogers? whom I presume to be flourishing,
and whom I regard as our poetical papa. You are his lawful son, and
I the illegitimate. Has he begun yet upon Sheridan? If you see our
republican friend, Leigh Hunt, pray present my remembrances. I saw
about nine months ago that he was in a row (like my friend
Hobhouse) with the Quarterly Reviewers. For my part, I never could
understand these quarrels of authors with critics and with one
another. 'For God's sake, gentlemen, what do they mean?'

"What think you of your countryman, Maturin? I take some credit to
myself for having done my best to bring out Bertram; but I must say
my colleagues were quite as ready and willing. Walter Scott,
however, was the _first_ who mentioned him, which he did to me,
with great commendation, in 1815; and it is to this casualty, and
two or three other accidents, that this very clever fellow owed his
first and well-merited public success. What a chance is fame!

"Did I tell you that I have translated two Epistles?--a
correspondence between St. Paul and the Corinthians, no