Weston-super-Mare, July 1819.

Sick or well, dear Mrs. Pennington is ever kind and obliging, but why empty her veins at such a rough rate? Were they bursting with heat? A Bath friend writes me word that the people there do feel themselves heavily oppress'd by a weight of atmospheric air, and walk about, he says, like somnambulists, with salmon-coloured faces. We have sea-breezes here that refresh our spirits, and send us out at night to stare after the Comet, which looked very pale last evening I saw it, but not, I hope, for anger.

There are other fiery fellows in the North, more dangerous by far, of whom I feel more afraid; but the Regent went safely, and was applauded it is said, and the Reformers will work no reformation at Smithfield under Mr. Hunt's guidance. He tried in vain to make the Basket Women at Bath hate Sinecures; tho' one of them said she knew he meant the Signing Curs, kept by Ministers to sign whatever they bid them,—comical enough!

If all goes on regularly and well, I shall certainly call on you, dear Madam, in my return. When that will be, however, is hard to say, for I have just hired myself a clean Cottage,—the Hotel is very noisy, and surprisingly expensive,—and since the Bathing agrees, I mean to try another tide or two by the way of making myself young, or making myself believe that I am younger than my neighbours of the same standing....

People are visiting-mad here, as everywhere else. Do you remember Mr. Pennington saying he hoped there were no Evening Parties in Heaven? He will not escape them till he gets thither, nor shall, without the utmost difficulty his and your ever faithful and obliged

H. L. Piozzi.

I saw Miss Williams spreading the Bread Fruit with butter, and eating it at her tea, ten days before I left Bath,—but it was kind in you to send me some.

The comet of July 1819 was that now known by the name of Winnecke, who, in 1858, identified it with one previously observed by Encke.

Henry Hunt had for many years been associated with the leading agitators of the time. He made the acquaintance of Horne Tooke in 1800, shared imprisonment with Cobbett in 1810, and allied himself with Thistlewood and his friends in 1816. He took part in the Spa Fields meeting, presided at the Reform meeting at Smithfield which took place on July 21, and at the "Peterloo" meeting, held on August 16 this year.

Weston-super-Mare,

Saturday Night, 4 Sep. 1819.

Dear Mrs. Pennington's letter came late last night; our poor Postman cannot get his walk finished,—how should he?—till near 12 o'clock, which is one of the discomforts incident to our fav'rite Weston. This morning the Grinfields of Laura Chapel, Bath, left us, and you may have half their house for two guineas and a half o' week. They paid five for the whole, and had 7 or 8 Babies inhabiting it, with a proportionate number of nurses, etc. But send an immediate answer, or it will be gone.... If you come quite alone, our Baker, Mr. Cooper, will accommodate you with one chamber up a ladder-like staircase, and one sitting room: but such a lodging too nearly resembles that in Coleman's Broad Grins;—one guinea and a half is, I think, too much for that, though 'tis struggled for!!...

Oh! what heavenly weather here is! And oh! what fools is it flung away upon! who will not gather up the harvest, but run about reforming errors in the State. They have got a wiser head now, who is better qualified to do mischief, and accordingly we read that yesterday's meeting passed off without any mad frolics on which to fix the stigma of treason or insanity:—two things so difficult to prove they oblige us to adopt Elbow's method in Measure for Measure, who says, "they must continue in their courses till we can tell what they are."[25] ...

[25] "Let him continue in his courses till thou knowest what they are."—Measure for Measure, III. i. 196.

Weston-super-Mare,

Tuesday, 7 Sept. 1819.

Your letter came too late last night, dear Mrs. Pennington, for me to take any measures concerning the House.... You will have it, as a favour, for three Pounds o' week;—cheaper than mine certainly.

The list of things wanted is just everything: knives, forks, spoons, plate, linnen: Weston affords only beds, tables, and chairs. Yes, yes, they do give us crockery, and there were two books in the town when I came, a Bible and a Paradise Lost. They were the best you know.

I am no better pleased with the complexion of the times than you are, but feel much more sympathy with the Mob than with their Galvanizers, who mean to give just the portion of excitement they choose, in order to deplace, displace I mean, one set of Ministers, and put up another set in which they take deeper interest. In this virtuous cause they care not what lives, or whose peace they endanger. But let them be cautious, or the Mob will make them their tools, to help break down the gates which, when thrown back as those of Hell in Milton, they will start to see

Before their eyes in sudden view appear

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark

Illimitable Ocean without bound,

Without dimension: where length, breadth, and height,

And time and place are lost.[26]

Noblemen and Gentlemen are of necessity Aristocrates in earnest: and the numbers who now stand aloof, looking how it will end, and being—as we used to say of dear Siddons—no-crates at all, will even die with terror, and the conscious certainty that the great folk who assisted in the work at first, broke open, but to shut excelled their power. An ambitious Sovreign meanwhile, might while his army continues true to him, make them all his tools; suffering them so to destroy the House of Commons that he could reign in future without a Parliament, only just cajoling the Reformers between to-day and the year 1820. And such madmen are those who wish the overturn of constituted authorities....

Poor dear Mrs. Lambart can hardly hear these strange tales, I believe; she is at least seven years older than myself, but does not like, it seems, to tell her age. My Register, clearly written, as Bishop Majendie says, points out 1740.

[26] Paradise Lost, ii. 890.

On September 12 Mrs. Pennington writes to Miss Brown that she is going to Weston. "Dear Mrs. Piozzi is there, we shall be within two or three doors of her. She has been as active and anxious to serve us in this particular as she could have been at any former period.... If the air of that place, the fine weather we seem likely to have, and her charming society, does not restore me to something like health and spirits, I shall give up the point altogether."

The Card Table Riddle, which appears in the next letter, is taken from Mrs. Piozzi's Commonplace Book; where she remarks that "it has been plundered, and played tricks with, and published in Pocket Books, &c., but these are the genuine verses."