that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as
amiable a _laddess_, but I had rather see their house comfortably when
they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It began here
but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-forty hours without
intermission. My poor hay has not a dry thread to its back. I have had a
fire these three days. In short, every summer one lives in a state of
mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will
affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our
poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of
their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling
breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise
these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to
enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such
thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east wind, that makes Damon
button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue;
and then they cry, _This is a bad summer_! as if we ever had any other.
The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined
never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over
foreign trees, and making our houses clamber up hills to look at
prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no
being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a
thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us,
and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again.

There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say, I
am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hot-house in St.
Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there was
very little merit in it. I had seen so much of all parties, that I had