Let me hear from you, if even but a line, before you leave London on your
summer excursion, whithersoever that is to be. I conclude you go
somewhere; to Hampshire, or to Tenby. . . .
I have nothing to tell you of myself. Here I exist, and read scraps of
books, garden a little, and am on good terms with my neighbours. The
Times paper is stirring up our farming society to the root, and some good
will come of it, I dare say, and some ill. Do you know of any good books
on Education? not for the poor or Charity schools, but on modern
Gentlemen's grammar schools, etc. Did not Combe write a book? But he is
the driest Scotch Snuff. I beg leave to say that this letter is written
with a pen of my own making: the first I have made these twenty years. I
doubt after all it is no proof of a very intelligent pen-Creator, but
only of a lucky slit. The next effort shall decide. Farewell, my dear
Fellow. Don't forget unworthy me. We shall soon have known each other
twenty years, and soon thirty, and forty, if we live a little while.
_To Bernard Barton_.
GELDESTONE, 22 _August_ 1844.