I have to thank you for a vast deal of trouble you have given yourself: all in the end will turn out well, I hope. I have written a few lines in answer to the “Morning Chronicle,” which you will afterwards see in “Galignani,” without doubt.
What a simpleton you are sometimes! Leave my systems to me, and adopt those of your own; but don’t blame mine, as you have done, without knowing the reason of them.
Miss Pardoe’s book I have not yet looked into. The one[41] you sent me is interesting only to those who were acquainted with the persons named:—all mock taste, mock feeling, &c.; but that is the fashion. “I am this—I am that:” who ever talked such empty stuff formerly? I was never named by a well-bred person.
There has been a vast deal of rain this year; but not very cold: the house nearly as usual. My cough continues—my spirits the same.
A hyena came into the garden the other day, and Ibrahim Beytàr killed it with only a bludgeon, and brought me the skin: it is the first wild beast of the kind that has been so daring this winter. The dogs frightened the animal so much on the outside that it scaled the wall.
Let me hear when you leave Nice. I should think England would be a very unpleasant séjour in the present state of affairs; Switzerland, perhaps, more healthy, cheaper, and more agreeable, until you see distinctly the turn things take and my affairs settled. You do not mention your health; therefore, I hope it is not to be complained of at this moment.
Shut up, as I am, I can have no news:—advice you take ill, and call it scolding. I am too much obliged to Captain Pardoe for having undertaken my commissions. I have safely received the stockings you had the attention to send me. * * * *
You must promise to state to me fairly the impression my affairs make with the English, and what sort, what class of English.
Arriàn has been bribed, and is now raising a regiment of two thousand for Ibrahim Pasha. There will be hard work here ere long. It appears the kurkuby [uproar] about money was certainly the disgusting examination into the private affairs of officers in the navy at the Admiralty, and of the army at the Horse Guards: it has disgusted every one, and roused a feeling about me.