re, I
intend to learn Paradise Lost by heart at odd moments. But I must
conclude. Write to me often, my dear Mother, and all of you at home, or
you may have to answer for my drowning myself, like Gray's bard, in "Old
Conway's foaming flood," which is most conveniently near for so poetical
an exit.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T. B. M.

Llanrwst: August 32, 1821.

My dear Father,--I have just received your letter, and cannot but feel
concerned at the tone of it. I do not think it quite fair to attack me
for filling my letters with remarks on the King's Irish expedition. It
has been the great event of this part of the world. I was at Bangor
when he sailed. His bows, and the Marquis of Anglesea's fete, were the
universal subjects of conversation; and some remarks on the business
were as natural from me as accounts of the coronation from you in
London. In truth I have little else to say. I see nothing that connects
me with the world except the newspapers. I get up, breakfast, read, play
at quoits, and go to bed. This is the history of my life. It will do for
every day of the last fortnight.

As to the King, I spoke of the business, not at all as a political,
but as a moral question,--as a point of correct feeling and of private
decency. If Lord were to issue tickets for a gala ball immediately
after receiving intelligence of the sudden death of his divorced wife, I
should say the same. I pretend to no great insight into party politics;
but the question whether it is proper for any man to mingle in
festivities while his wife's body lies unburied is one, I confess, which
I thought myself competent to decide. But I am not anxious about the
fate of my remarks, which I have quite forgot, and which, I dare say,
were very foolish. To me it is of little importance whether the King's
conduct were right or wrong; but it is of great importance that those
whom I love should not think me a precipitate, silly, shallow sciolist
in politics, and suppose that every frivolous word that falls from my
pen is a dogma which I mean to advance as indisputable; and all this
only because I write to them without reserve; only because I love them
well enough to trust them with every idea which suggests itself to me.
In fact, I believe that I am not more precipitate or presumptuous than
other people, but only more open. You cannot be more fully convinced
than I am how contracted my means are of forming a judgment. If I chose
to weigh ever