If, as I trust, you have received my first volume of the Peninsular War,

& the lithographic views which my friend William Westall has engraved to accompany it,

you will perceive that negligent as I have been in delaying so long to thank you for the books, & to reply to you your welcome letter, I had not been wholly unmindful of you. Without attempting to excuse a delay for which I have long reproached myself, I may say that it has been chiefly, if not wholly occasioned by an expectation that I might have communicated to you Giffords retirement from the management of the Quarterly Review, & the assumption of that management by a friend of mine, who would have given it a consistent & decorous tone upon all subjects. Poor Gifford was for several months in such a state that his death was continually looked for. His illness has thrown the journal two numbers in arrear;

he feels & acknowledges his inability to conduct it, – & yet his unwillingness to part with a power which he cannot exercise has hitherto stood in the way of any other arrangement.

I have more than once remonstrated both with him & Murray upon the folly & mischief of their articles respecting xx America:

& should the Journal pass into the hands of any person whom I can influence its temper will most assuredly be changed. The writer of the last obnoxious paper upon that subject is said to have been Matthews, author of the Diary of an Invalid.

Such papers, the silence of the journal upon certain topics on which it ought manfully to have spoken out,

& the abominable style of its criticism upon some notorious subjects,

have made me more than once think seriously of withdrawing from it: & I have only been withheld by the hope of its amendment, & the certainty that thro this channel I could act with more immediate effect than thro any other. – Inclosed you have a list of all my papers in it. I mean shortly to see whether Murray is willing to reprint such of them as are worth preserving, restoring where I can the passages which Gifford (to the sore mutilation of the part always, & sometimes to the destruction of the sense & arguments) chose to omit, – & beginning with the Moral & Political Essays.

It is Kenyons fault that I am <not> able to give you his specific address, but if you direct to Bath, the letter will surely find him, for he has lately taken a house there. M^rs K. as you apprehended ended her days at Naples. -

He married most suitably in every respect about a year ago,

& last month my niece <Xxxx though> & her mother M^rs Coleridge saw him apparently in full enjoyment of health & happiness. By the bye that niece, one of the girls whom you saw here, is the translator of my old friend Dobrizhoffer.

Your friends & countrymen who come to Keswick make a far shorter tarriance than I could wish. They ‘come like shadows, so depart.’

D^r Channing

could give me only part of a short evening. Randolph of Roanoak

no more, xxxxx he left me with a promise that if he returned from Scotland by the western side of the island, he would become my guest: if he could have been persuaded to this, it would have done him good, for he stood in need of society, & of those comforts which are not to be obtained at an inn. – M^r Elliot

past thro about five weeks ago, – & on Monday last we had a younger traveller here – M^r Gardner.

No country can send out better specimens of its sons.

I must <now> thank you for the books, – which owing to a blunder at the Custom House were some months in London before they were sent off to Keswick. And first let me thank you in Isabel’s name, who was not a little flattered by your remembrance of her. Dwights

is an interesting book, of that kind which becomes more valuable from time. This as well as the New England Tale

has lately been reprin published here. That tale is very characteristic & therefore singularly pleasing.

It will not be long before I shall send you the Book of the Church,

– & in the spring I trust the second volume of the Peninsular War will follow it. Of my other undertakings some have grown slowly, & some stood still; & I begin to feel as well as fear that I have planned more than I shall live to perform. Before this letter reaches you I shall have entered upon my fiftieth year; – & when the hourglass is running out you know how rapidly the sands appear to pass.

Coleridge talks of bringing out his work upon Logic,

of collecting his poems, & of adapting his translation of Wallenstein for the stage,

Kean

having taken a fancy to exhibit himself in it. Wordsworth is just returned from a trip to the Netherlands; he loves rambling & has no pursuits which require him to be stationary. I shall probably see him in a few days. Every year shows more & more how deeply <strongly> his poetry has leavened the rising generation. Your Mocking Bird is said to improve the strain which he imitates: this is not the case with ours.

I conclude this too long delayed letter on the eve of my departure for London. From thence in the course of the next month I shall send you the B of the Church. – Gifford is so far recovered that he hopes to conduct the review to the 60^th N^o.

I have sent him the commencement of a paper upon Dwights book, which I shall finish in town. The first part is a review of its miscellaneous information, – the second will examine the points of difference between an old country & a new one, their advantages & disadvantages, what each has to hope & to fear, & the folly of supposing that the institutions which suit the one must necessarily be equally suitable to the other

The article upon Spain

in the last number is by Blanco White (Leucadio Doblado.)

whose history you probably know, a very able & most estimable man. That poor country seems destined to an alternation of evils.

There are better prospects for Portugal. The King is tractable & has good intentions.

His present ministers wish to recur to their own constitutional principles & their own good laws;

& whatever influence this country possesses will be directed to that effect. I should augur well of the result if I could see in what manner a revenue can be raised.

Farewell my dear Sir. Remember me to Alston

& my other New England friends, & be assured that to them & to their country I shall always do justice in thought, word & deed 

My poem

is once more progressive, & will probably be ready for the press in the course of next year