Your letter dated from the Eternal City on the 15th of May reached me
here two days ago. Perhaps you have by this time left Naples to which
you bid me direct: or will have left it by the time my letter gets there.
. . . Our letters are dated from two very different kinds of places: but
perhaps equally well suited to the genius of the two men. For I am
becoming more hebete every hour: and have not even the ambition to go up
to London all this spring to see the Exhibitions, etc. I live in general
quietly at my brother-in-law's in Norfolk {67} and I look with tolerable
composure on vegetating there for some time to come, and in due time
handing out my eldest nieces to waltz, etc., at the County Balls. People
affect to talk of this kind of life as very beautiful and philosophical:
but I don't: men ought to have an ambition to stir, and travel, and fill
their heads and senses: but so it is. Enough of what is now generally
called the subjective style of writing. This word has made considerable
progress in England during the year you have been away, so that people
begin to fancy they understand what it means. I have been striving at
it, because it is a very _sine qua non_ condition in a book which I have
just been reading, Eastlake's translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours.
I recommend it to you, when you can get hold of it. Come back to England
quick and read my copy. Goethe is all in opposition to Newton: and
reduces the primitive colours to two. Whewell, I believe, does not
patronise it: but it is certainly very Baconically put together. While
you are wandering among ruins, waterfalls, and temples, and contemplating
them as you sit in your lodgings, I poke about with a book and a colour-
box by the side of the river Ouse--quiet scenery enough--and make
horrible sketches. The best thing to me in Italy would be that you are
there. But I hope you will soon come home and install yourself again in
Mornington Crescent. I have just come from Leamington: while there, I
met Alfred by chance: we made two or three pleasant excursions together:
to Stratford upon Avon and Kenilworth, etc. Don't these names sound very
thin amid your warm southern nomenclature? But I'll be bound you would
be pleased to exchange all your fine burnt up places for a look at a
Warwickshire pasture every now and then during these hot days. . . .
The sun shines very bright, and there is a kind of bustle in these clean
streets, because there is to be a grand True Blue dinner in the town
Hall. Not that I am going: in an hour or two I shall be out in the
fields rambling alone. I read Burnet's History--ex pede Herculem. Well,
say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a country as Old
England--never were there such a Gentry as the English. They will be the
distinguishing mark and glory of England in History, as the Arts were of
Greece, and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me to any land
so beautiful, as the good sense, justice, and liberality of my good
countrymen make this. And I cling the closer to it, because I feel that
we are going down the hill, and shall perhaps live ourselves to talk of
all this independence as a thing that has been. To none of which you
assent perhaps. At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have
done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a window that
looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the
distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc. Haven't
I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of Massaniello long ago?
_To John Allen_.
BOULGE HALL,
_Sunday_, _July_ 12/40.