be*. But, at length, after a week of half-delirium, burning skin, thirst, hot headache, horrible pulsation, and no sleep, by the blessing of barley water, and refusing to see any physician, I recovered. It is an epidemic of the place, which is annual, and visits strangers. Here follow some versicles, which I made ' one sleepless night.

"I read the "Christabel;"
'Very well:

* I read the "Missionary ;"

Pretty-very:

"I tried at "Ilderim;"

'Ahem;

I read a sheet of "Margret of Anjou;"

• Can you?

'I turn'd a page of "**'s Waterloo;"

• Pooh! pooh!

'I look'd at Wordsworth's milk-white "Rylstone Doe:"
'Hillo!

' &c. &c. &c.'

I have not the least idea where I am going, nor 'what I am to do. I wished to have gone to Rome; 'but at present it is pestilent with English,—a parcel ' of staring boobies, who go about gaping and wishing 'to be at once cheap and magnificent. A man is a 'fool who travels now in France or Italy, till this 'tribe of wretches is swept home again. In two or 'three years the first rush will be over, and the Con'tinent will be roomy and agreeable.

'I stayed at Venice chiefly because it is not one of their "dens of thieves;" and here they but pause and pass. In Switzerland it was really noxious.

In a note to Mr. Murray, subjoined to some corrections for Manfred, he says, 'Since I wrote to you last, the slow fever I wot of thought proper to mend its pace, and became similar to one which I caught some years ago in the marshes of Elis, in the Morea,'

Luckily, I was early, and had got the prettiest place ' on all the Lake before they were quickened into 'motion with the rest of the reptiles. But they crossed 'me everywhere. I met a family of children and 'old women half-way up the Wengen Alp (by the 'Jungfrau) upon mules, some of them too old and ' others too young to be the least aware of what they

saw.

By the way, I think the Jungfrau, and all that region of Alps, which I traversed in September'going to the very top of the Wengen, which is not 'the highest (the Jungfrau itself is inaccessible) but 'the best point of view-much finer than Mont-Blanc ' and Chamouni, or the Simplon. I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, part of which she copied and let Murray see.

'I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of intro'ducing the Alpine scenery in description; and this I 'sent lately to Murray. Almost all the dram. pers. are spirits, ghosts, or magicians, and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may suppose 'what a Bedlam tragedy it must be: make him show 'it you. I sent him all three acts piecemeal, by the 'post, and suppose they have arrived.

'I have now written to you at least six letters, or letterets, and all I have received in return is a note ' about the length you used to write from Bury-street 'to St. James's-street, when we used to dine with Rogers, and talk laxly, and go to parties, and hear poor Sheridan now and then. Do you remember one night he was so tipsy that I was forced to put ' his cocked hat on for him, for he could not,—and I 'let him down at Brookes's, much as he must since have been let down into his grave. Heigh ho! I

1

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

' wish I was drunk-but I have nothing but this d-d 'barley-water before me.

'I am still in love,-which is a dreadful drawback ' in quitting a place, and I can't stay at Venice much longer. What I shall do on this point I don't know. 'The girl means to go with me, but I do not like this for her own sake. I have had so many conflicts in my ' own mind on this subject, that I am not at all sure they did not help me to the fever I mentioned above. 'I am certainly very much attached to her, and I have cause to be So, if you knew all. But she has a child; ' and though, like all the "children of the sun," she 'consults nothing but passion, it is necessary I should 'think for both; and it is only the virtuous, like ****, who can afford to give up husband and child, and 'live happy ever after.

The Italian ethics are the most singular ever met with. The perversion, not only of action, but of reasoning, is singular in the women. It is not that

they do not consider the thing itself as wrong, and very wrong, but love (the sentiment of love) is not 'merely an excuse for it, but makes it an actual virtue, 'provided it is disinterested, and not a caprice, and is 'confined to one object. They have awful notions of constancy; for I have seen some ancient figures of 'eighty pointed out as Amorosi of forty, fifty, and sixty years standing. I can't say I have ever seen ' a husband and wife so coupled.

'Ever, &c.

'P.S. Marianna, to whom I have just translated what I have written on our subject to you, says "If you loved me thoroughly, you would not make so many fine reflections, which are only good for'birsi i scarpi,”—that is, "to clean shoes withal,”—a

VOL. II.

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