determined to get away from the office by some means. The purpose of
this letter is to request of you (my dear friend) that you will not take
it unkind if I decline my proposed visit to Cambridge _for the present_.
Perhaps I shall be able to take Cambridge _in my way_, going or coming.
I need not describe to you the expectations which such an one as myself,
pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the Lakes.
Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth! Coleridge! I hope you will.*
Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. I will eat
snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess, confess, a _bite_.

_P.S._ I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest of Lloyd to
send such an invitation! It shows his knowledge of money and time. I
would be loth to think he meant

"Ironic satire sidelong sklented
On my poor pursie."--BURNS.

For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that
I am not romance-bit about _Nature_. The earth, and sea, and sky (when
all is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous,
and good liquors flow like the conduits at an old coronation; if they
can talk sensibly and feel properly; I have no need to stand staring
upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings
in the purchase), nor his five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of
old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as
important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world--
eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets,
markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty
faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening,
gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles,