How are you--how are you getting on? A voice from the tombs thus
addresses you; respect the dead, and answer. Barton is well; that is, I
left him well on Friday: but he was just going off to attend a Quaker's
funeral in the snow: whether he has survived that, I don't know.
To-morrow is his Birth-day: and I am going (if he be alive) to help him
to celebrate it. His portrait has been hung (under my directions) over
the mantel-piece in his sitting room, with a broad margin of some red
stuff behind it, to set it off. You may turn up your nose at all this;
but let me tell you it is considered one of the happiest contrivances
ever adopted in Woodbridge. Nineteen people out of twenty like the
portrait much; the twentieth, you may be sure, is a man of no taste at
all.
I hear you were for a long time in Cumberland. Did you paint a
waterfall--or old Wordsworth--or Skiddaw, or any of the beauties? Did
you see anything so inviting to the pencil as the river Deben? When are
you coming to see us again? Churchyard relies on your coming; but then
he is a very sanguine man, and, though a lawyer, wonderfully confident in
the promises of men. How are all your family? You see I have asked you
some questions; so you must answer them; and believe me yours truly,