Your dear padre is very considerably better, surtout in looks, but by no means re-established ; for cold air—too much exertion- -too little—and all sorts of nourishment or beverage that are not precisely adapted to the present state of the poor shattered frame, produce instant pain, uneasiness, restlessness, and suffering. Such, however, is the common condition of convalescence, and therefore I observe it with much more concern than surprise - and Mr. Hay assures me all is as well as can possibly be expected after so long and irksome an illness.
"The scholarship is at an end—
So much for that!"
pretty cool, my friend!
Will it make you double your diligence for what is not at an end? hey, mon petit monsieur?
But I am sorry for your disappointment in the affair you mention, my dear Alex : though your affections were not so far engaged, methinks, but that your amour propre(303) is still more bless(304) than your heart! hey? However, 'tis a real loss,
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though little more than of an ideal friend, at present. But no idea is so flattering and so sweet, as that which opens to expectation a treasure of such a sort. I am really, therefore, sorry for you, my dear Alex.
Your determination to give way to no sudden impulse in future is quite right. Nothing is so pleasant as giving way to impulse; nothing so hazardous.
But this history must double your value for Messrs. Jones Musgrave, Jacobs, Ebden, Theobald, and Whewell. "Cling to those who cling to you!" said the immortal Johnson to your mother, when she uttered something that seemed fastidious relative to a person whose partiality she did not prize.
Your padre was prevailed upon to go to the play. We were both very well pleased with H. Payne in certain parts; in some instances I even thought him excellent, especially in the natural, gentlemanly, and pensive tones in which he went through the gravedigger's and other scenes of the last act. But, for the soliloquies, and the grand conference with the mother! oh, there, Garrick rose up to my remembrance with an clat of perfection that mocks all approach of approbation for a successor.