ritten, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
personally more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival--a proud
distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
happened to comprise within it--amidst a considerable leaven of
Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
travels--several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
return to England?' was the general exclamation--I answer _why_? It
is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of
pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence--and
I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
respect to itself, t