It gives me great pleasure to hear from yourself of your safe return to England.

Travelling is indeed delightful for those who have no cares or anxieties to distract them and draw their thoughts homeward. Even in the least interesting parts of a foreign land there is always something to excite curiosity, to deserve notice, to keep the mind on the alert. But to visit the most interesting of all countries, to be capable of understanding and enjoying whatever is most interesting there, and to enjoy it at leisure as you have done, is what I should envy, if it were allowable to envy anything.

Canova,

as you describe him, is not less admirable as a man than as an artist. I would fain think, as well as hope, that this is usually the case with those who are most eminent in any intellectual pursuit, that exceptions when we see them are deviations from the course of nature, and that a wicked man of genius is a monster in the moral world. From what you say of him, I should think he must sometimes wish himself a painter. To me the finest sculpture compared with a picture seems like a cold abstraction. But on the other hand there is a durability in marble which affects my mind very strongly: no term can be assigned to its duration, no common accident is likely to reach it, and in this world of decay and change it is consolitary to contemplate anything over which time has no power. Therefore if, like Canova, I could have chosen between the two arts, I should, like him, have trusted my fame to marble rather than to canvas.

I have not been in London since I saw you there.

How I have been employing myself will in part be seen when the first volume of the Peninsular War goes forth.

It has been printed several weeks, and Murray is delaying its appearance till what the booksellers call their season shall begin.

My health suffered a good deal in the early part of the year. A violent catarrh, to which I have been subject for the last twenty years as regularly as the summer begins, laid stronger hold upon me than it had ever done before, and effected a lodgment in my chest, which might easily have become serious. Withal my whole system was sadly relaxed. As soon as I was capable of exertion, I resolved to try a course of continued exercise. This I began about midsummer; a succession of guests assisted in drawing me out; and I have persevered in it with wonderful effect, though too much to the derangement of my needful pursuits. But it has brought me into such good condition, that I am at this time as capable of any exertion among these mountains as I ever was in my life. My brother, the Doctor, made me a short visit lately, and left me with strict injunctions to keep up the same course as far as possible through the winter. At the end of February, or beginning of March, I must visit town.

You will no doubt be there before me or I should very gladly take Coleorton in my way. Before I leave home I shall publish that sketch of our religious history to which Wordsworth alludes in his Preface.

It is in the press, and I hope it may answer the end for which it is designed.

My family, thank God, are all in good health. They are greatly changed since you saw them. Edith is now taller than her mother, Bertha a great girl, and Kate and Isabel no longer little ones. My little Cuthbert is the delight of all who know him. I think you and Lady Beaumont would perceive in him a resemblance which I often feel, not in features—for the eyes are very different,—but in the character and expression of the countenance.

The kindness expressed in your letter encourages me to say something which I have long wished to say. It is, that nothing would be more gratifying to me than to possess some little memorial of your hand,

which I should look at with pleasure, and show with pride, and which would be valued as it ought by those who come after me.