Your Gazetas are a lucky purchase for me. My series de Gobierno is compleat from the beginning of 1810. I have in all 21 volumes, including a good many provincial Gazettes.

But I have not a single Spanish newspaper for 1808, & only a broken set for 1809, consisting of such as were sent over to my poor correspondent Abella when he was attached to the embassy here. After his return he supplied xx me very punctually: & thro his means the Junta of Aragon had promised me a compleat series of theirs (which was the best conducted of the whole) – but Ferdinand returned

& there was an end of the Junta, & of my resources in that quarter

In 1809, there is a gap in my collection from Apr. 24 – to July 20, – besides many smaller chasms. Nothing therefore can be better timed than your supply. And at my leisure I shall be most glad to improve the first volume,

– throughout which I felt the want of such materials grievously.

I have Valentyn

– a set which Heber spared me. £3 was its price, & it wanted a leaf, & one or two prints. I believe its price at Brussels is about 80 francs: fine books are surprizingly cheap there. So much so, that if I lived in the south, I should pay my Verbeyst

a visit every two or three years, for the purpose of overhauling his stores.

Murray tells me the sale has answered his best expectations, what the extent of those expectations may have been, of course, he has not told me, but they are not likely to have been moderate ones. I may reasonably hope that it will prepare a sale from my for my history of Portugal,

as the general opinion in its favour seems to be much more than I myself, xxx xxx, who never court opinion, had looked for.

The election at Westminster is easily comprehended: & is altogether distinct from the ordinary business of the school.

The examination is wholly between the boys themselves, the master sitting as judge. It begins with the two lowest candidates, the xxx lower of these sets the other an epigram in the Anthology, out of a certain number appointed for that challenge, & asks him as many questions upon any two words of that epigram as his Help

can cram him with. As soon as he has corrected him thrice he takes his place, & is in his turn tasked in the same manner, he whose store of questions is first exhausted, retires the loser, & then the next boy in the ascending list comes out to be in like manner challenged by the winner. In the Latin challenge

only three questions are asked by each: this therefore is in comparison a mere trifle. The examination is so long & so strict, that tho the preparation is altogether x an affair of cramming, the boys are excellently grounded by going thro it;

but I am sorry to say the system of the College

is such, that at the examination when they are to be elected off to Oxford & Cambridge, the seniors are found as much below what they ought to be, as the newly elected juniors are above the usual standard of their age. So D^r Wordsworth told me last year, & I explained to him that the cause lay in the system of tyranny which px is suffered there. The truth is that the economy of the College requires a total change. And if any friend of mine should ever be Dean of Westminster,

I will endeavor to convince him of it