I enter into your dinner and house bothers.
I don't find that variety in the beef of to-morrow and the mutton of to-day, which the _Anti-Jacobin_ expatiates upon with such delight, and the joints diminish in sheep when we eat mutton. As for puddings, they are one and the same, and only one, and then when one has tortured one's brain and produced a dinner, and that it is eaten, my heart sinks at the prospect that to-morrow will again require its meal, _et les bras me tombent ..._.
Lord[143] and Lady Bute are coming here. We don't know them at all, but I suppose we shall see them, which is bore, for nothing is so tiresome as to be near neighbours with people one scarce knows. One has one foot in intimacy, and the other in formality, and it makes but a limping acquaintance. I don't think Lady Lansdowne has quite got over my not marrying her way; she covers it up very well, but you know how soon you and I can see through all that, and I know also that Sir Guy is not likely to overcome that feeling in her. He is not a party man, he is not scientific, and unless he likes people he is very shy, and I see they will never make it up. But I always thought marriage must disarrange many acquaintances. I don't regret acquaintances; even to have had variety of acquaintances is an advantage, for the reason which makes a public school an advantage to a boy; it widens the mind. But to go on through life with them is heartless and thankless too. I mean to save my time, and keep it all for those I like and love.... We have lovely warm spring weather here, always breakfast with the window open and getting away from the fires. I must say the climate far exceeded my expectations. The garden is covered with thick white patches of snow-drops in full bloom. Don't this make your mouth water, and your eyes too, you poor misery in your cold smoke?
Good-bye, Dearest, have you been drawing and what? I don't mean just now in London, but in your lucid intervals, and are you well?
So far London is a place that cures or kills. Your own
Don't go out during this pestilential month of March, people may call it east wind and sharp, but it is neither more or less than a plague, that regularly blows thro' the Islands, and it is nonsense to brave it, just because it is not called pest, or yellow or scarlet, or pink fever, so don't go out.