When I sent you my brothers Prospectus

I ought to have told you how well aware I was that you would have little chance or opportunity of obtaining names for him it. Thank you for your own. The list increases slowly, but it is increasing, & there appears a fair likelihood of making up the appointed number.

I was very glad to receive your letter, & the satisfactory – & more <than> satisfactory news of John’s examination; – the result will in all xx probability put a fellowship within his reach;

– which tho a bad thing when it unites a man for better for worse to a college life, is at the beginning an honour, & an useful step in life.

You are likely to see one of my daughters – I am almost sorry to say, long before I shall. Edith will set out with Lady Malet,

for Seaton, upon your coast, about the end of this month, where they will be joined by our friends the Miss Charters.

Their plans as far as I understand them, are, to remain some time at Seaton, & when they break up from thence, Lady M. will make some visits in Somersetshire, & Edith makes hers to your friendly abode before she rejoins her. But you shall hear from me as soon as I know of her arrival on the coast. – Bertha is also in London, as a guest with Rickmans family, when Parliament breaks up

she will accompany them to the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, & the sisters will most probably not return to Cumberland, till they come together which is not likely to be before the beginning of next year. My Uncle (M^r Hill) is become so very infirm that there is too much reason for apprehending I may be summoned to London before that time.

I told you my reasons for declining the proposal of being named one of the Royal Literary Associates.

Had it been a mere honour I should have accepted it as a matter of course, & of courtesy. In my situation any individual who pleases may throw dirt at me, & any associated body which pleases may stick a feather in my cap – I am the dirt does not stick, the feathers are no incumbrance if they are of no use, & I regard the one as little as the other. But in this case the feather was clogged with a condition that I was to receive £100 a year for which it was to be my duty every year to write an essay – to be printed if the Committee approved it, in their Transactions.

What should I gain by doing that once a year for this Committee, which I may do once a quarter for the QR? & which I could not do without leaving a paper in that Review undone? – with this difference that what I write in the Review is read every where is received with deference, & carries with it weight, – whereas their Transactions cannot by possibility have a fiftieth part of the circulation: & will either excite ridicule, or drop still-born from the press. I would have accepted a mere honour, in mere courtesy, – & I would thankfully have accepted profit, – but when they contrived x so to mix up both as to leave neither one nor the other in my case, all I had to do was civilly to decline the offer.

Sara Coleridge has given up her intended visit to Ireland, & is likely to go to London in the course of the Autumn, to be under the care of M^r Gillman

(with whom her father resides) for the complaint in her eyes.

This is certainly the time for drawing money out of the funds & vesting it in land, where that can be done. – I have no cares of that kind. My B of the Ch.

has been in the press for a second edition some six weeks: & this is all I know concerning it, – save & except that I am eating, drinking, & living upon the said Book at present. But the only two lines which I have received from Murray since I left town were to tell me it must go to press again. It is not unlikely that the next new work I undertake may be a Book of the State upon a similar plan.

– At present I am closely employed upon the Peninsular War

& recovering (I hope) from a very severe attack of my annual cold, which has for 12 days confined me to the house, & during great part of the time to a darkened room. To day I have walked out for the first time, – but it has pulled me down sadly, & has not left me yet. – I am drinking your cider with great satisfaction, – the greater as being yours. My kindest remembrances to M^rs L & my younger friends

– Best regards from all my womankind – with a particular charge that I must not forget to entreat you to visit me again, & see all that you left unseen.