Your affectionate uncle, S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily "thrid" the labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole purpose of seeing our Bishop's portrait.[202] My own by the same artist is very much better, though even in this the smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were in raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in their praise of William's.
MY DEAR SIR,--The bad weather had so far damped my expectations, that, though I regretted, I did not feel any disappointment at your not coming. And yet I hope you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation evenings on your return to town; because, if you come once, I flatter myself, you will afterwards be no unfrequent visitor.
At least, I have never been at any of the town conversazioni, literary, or artistical, in which the conversation has been more miscellaneous without degenerating into _pinches_, a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, without the least connection between the subjects, and with as little interest. You will like Irving as a companion and a converser even more than you admire him as a preacher. He has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant) a GROWING mind, and his character is MANLY throughout. There is one thing, too, that I cannot help considering as a recommendation to our evenings, that, in addition to a few ladies and pretty lasses, we have seldom more than five or six in company, and these generally of as many professions or pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters, two poets, one divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist, a major, a naval captain and voyager, a physician, a colonial chief justice, a barrister, and a baronet; and this was the most numerous meeting we ever had.
It would more than gratify me to know from you, what the impressions are which my "Aids to Reflection" make on your judgment. The conviction respecting the character of the times expressed in the _comment_ on Aph. vi., page 147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I venture to direct your notice particularly to the note, page 204 to 207, to the note to page 218, and to the sentences respecting common sense in the last twelve lines of page 252, and the _conclusion_, page 377.