Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure, for such it truly was, of receiving your picture.

It is a beautiful example of the manner in which, according to your principle, real subjects should be treated. You have dealt with this landscape as a poet does with an historical tale: modifying it to his purpose, and supplying whatever it wanted to make it suitable for his art. I thank you most sincerely for it; and this I can venture to say, that you have never painted a picture which will be regarded with more delight, nor prized more highly by its possessor.

You give us hopes of seeing you in the autumn. By that time I trust I shall be in a condition to accompany you in some of your excursions. My usual visitant at this season has seized me somewhat more violently than usual, and effected a lodgment in the chest, where it keeps its ground more obstinately than in any former attack. The inconvenience is more in the debility which it induces, by making me keep house when the catarrh is in full force, than in the complaint itself. Next year I will, if it be possible to get from home, try to fly from it; and as I know by an experience of more than twenty years that the only chance of escaping it is by travelling at the season when it would otherwise certainly come on, I will endeavour to set off at the end of April, and spend six or eight weeks on the Continent, probably in Holland and the north of Germany.

You will have seen by the papers that the Floating Island has made its appearance.

It sunk again last week, when some heavy rains had raised the lake four feet. By good fortune Professor Sedgwick

happened to be in Keswick, and examined it in time. Where he probed it a thin layer of mud lies upon a bed of peat which is six feet thick, and this rests upon a stratum of fine white clay, the same I believe which Miss Barker found in Borrowdale when building her unlucky house.

Where the gas is generated remains yet to be discovered, but when the peat is filled with this gas, it separates from the clay, and becomes buoyant. There must have been a considerable convulsion when this took place, for a rent was made in the bottom of the lake several feet in depth, and not less than fifty yards long, on each side of which the bottom rose and floated. It was a pretty sight to see the small fry exploring this new-made strait and darting at the bubbles which rose as the Professor was probing the bank. The discharge of air was considerable here when a pole was thrust down. But at some distance, where the rent did not extend, the bottom had been heaved up in a slight convexity, sloping equally in an inclined plane all round; and there, when the pole was introduced, a rush like a jet followed as it was withdrawn. The thing is the more curious, because as yet no example of it is known to have been observed in any other place.

We miss the two eldest girls sadly. Edith is gone into Devonshire, where I hope she will have leisure to profit by the lessons which she received from Fielding

when in town. Bertha is in Hampshire with my friend Rickman’s family, and there is little chance of our seeing them on this side Christmas. The others, thank God, are well.

A manufactory of Whitehaven notes has been discovered in this little town. The principal in this hopeful scheme was a bookbinder,

of whom I must say, that I could have better spared a better man.