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more valuable a thing as lodging as dear as two eggs a penny. Saturday, not being a day of business in the house, I met nobody; though I did not go to bed on my arrival. The little I have heard confirms the idea you know I entertained of the flatness of a certain political project; it could not pass unopposed, and in such a conflict, the expenditure of money to make a voter a knave, that you might be an honest senator, would, in such a swarm of locusts, surpass all calculation. However, I know nothing distinctly as yet, therefore I merely persevere in the notion I stated to you.

I have just seen the immortal Blucher. The gentlemen and ladies of the mob huzza him out of his den, like a wild beast to his offal; and this is repeated every quarter of an hour, to their great delight, and for aught appears, not at all to his dissatisfaction. I am now going to dine with a friend, before whose house the illustrious monarchs proceed to their surfeit at Guildhall. No doubt we shall have the newspapers in a state of eructation for at least a week. But I must close.

J. P. C.

MR. CURRAN TO D. LUBE, ESQ. DUBLIN.

MY DEAR LUBE, London, June, 1814. I AM not many days in London; yet am I as sick of it as ever I was of myself. No doubt it is not a favourable moment for society; politics spoil every thing; it is a perpetual tissue of

plots, cabals, low anxiety, and disappointment. Every thing I see disgusts and depresses me: I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years; and every thing every where relapsed into its former degradation. France rechained,— Spain again saddled for the priests,-and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider: and what makes the idea more cutting, her fate the work of her own ignorance and fury. She has completely lost all sympathy here, and I see no prospect for her, except a vindictive oppression and an endlessly increasing taxation. God give us, not happiness, but patience!

I have fixed to set out for Paris on Tuesday with Mr. W. He is a clever man-pleasant, informed, up to every thing, can discount the bad spirits of a friend, and has undertaken all trouble. I don't go for society, it is a mere name; but the thing is to be found nowhere, even in this chilly region. I question if it is much better in Paris. Here the parade is gross, and cold, and vulgar; there it is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more graceful; but in either place is not society equally a tyrant and a slave? The judg. ment despises it, and the heart renounces it. We seek it because we are idle-we are idle because we are silly; the natural remedy is some social intercourse, of which a few drops would restore; but we swallow the whole phial, and are sicker of the remedy than we were of the disease. We do not reflect that the variety of converse is found only with a very few, selected by our regard, and is ever lost in a promiscuous rabble, in whom we

cannot have any real interest, and where all is monotony. We have had it sometimes at the Priory, notwithstanding the bias of the ball that still made it roll to a particular side. I have enjoyed it, not long since, for a few hours in a week with as small a number, where too there was no smartness, no wit, no pretty affectation, no repartee; but where the heart will talk, the tongue may be silent,—a look will be a sentence, and the shortest phrase a volume. No; be assured, if the fancy is not led astray, it is only in the coterie that the thirst of the animal being can be slaked, or the pure luxury and anodyne of his life be found. He is endeared and exalted by being surpassed; he cannot be jealous of the wealth, however greater than his, which is expended for his pleasure, and which, in fact, he feels to be his own. As well might an alderman become jealous of the calapash in which his soul delights before the Lord. But we are for ever mistaking the plumage for the bird: perhaps we are justly punished by seeking happiness where it is not given by nature to find it. Eight or ten lines back I looked at my watch; I saw 'twas half past six, the hour at which dinner, with a friend or two, was to be precisely on the table. I went was presented to half a dozen dial plates that I never saw before, and that looked as if they had never told the hour of the day. I sat gagged-stayed twenty minutes-came back to write, leaving Richard to bring me word if, between this and to-morrow, the miserable mess shall be flung into the trough. How complete a picture this of glare without worth, and attitude

without action,-" My temper," to quote myself, "and my dinner lost." Can it have been the serious intention of Providence that affectation should obtain these triumphs over sense and comfort? and yet really my host is a very good fellow in the main.

'Tis now half past seven-no Richard. I had just put on my hat to go to the next coffeehouse, but I resolved to punish myself for the petty peevishness of being angry, because every one has not as much good sense as I think I have myself. I am now wishing that there may be no dinner till ten, that I may have the glory of self punishment,

Judico me cremari,

in continuation,—

Et combustus fui*.

We sat down at eight, sixteen strong, but it had nothing of a coterie. I sat next a pleasantish sort of a lady; but alas! a look of attention is not

* Mr. Curran alludes to an anecdote related by Sir William Blackstone, in one of the notes to his Commentaries. In the reign of Henry the Sixth, the Chancellor of Oxford claimed the right of trying an action brought against himself; upon which occasion his counsel, Serjeant Rolfe, introduced the following curions argument in support of the claim :-Jeo vous dirai un fable. En ascun temps fuit un pape et avoit fait un grand offence, et le cardinals vindrent a luy et disoyent a luy "peccasti:" et il dit, “judica me:" et ils disoyent “non possumus quia caput et ecclesiæ; judica teipsum" et l'apostal dit "judico me cremari," et fuit combustus; et apres fuit un sainct. Et in eo cas il fuit son juge demene, et issint n'est pas inconvenient que un home soit juge demene.-Blackst. Com. book iii. p. 299,

note.

a look of affiance: there are graciousnesses that neither identify nor attract; and as to the atmosphere that sported on her dimples, I would just as soon have had a thimbleful of common air. After all, how rare the coincidences that conciliate affection and exclusive confidence!-how precarious!

For either

He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain.
Or if she love, withheld

By parents, or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame!

Milton, you see, with all his rigour, was not insensible of these lachrymæ rerum. There is one thing that ought to make us humble and patient. When we are close enough for the inspection of others, we soon find that "life is eternal war with woe." Many, too, are doomed to "suffer alone;" and, after all, would not a truly generous nature prefer the monopoly of its own ills rather than fling any part of them upon a kindred bosom?

You ask me about politics. Regarding myself, my answer is-I had no object in parliament except the catholic question, and that I fear is gone. Westminster will probably be a race of bribery, equally disgraceful and precarious*. Burdett's

* It was expected at this time that there would shortly be a vacancy in the representation for Westminster, in which event Mr. Curran had been encouraged to offer himself as a candidate, but he never entered warmly into the scheme, though he adverts to it in several letters,

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