The Sun.
London, England, 1830-01-18 00:00:00

stein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to
my acquaintance—through Moore—of last summ
a copy of the two Turkish Tales. Hunt is an ex-
traordinary character, arid not exactly of the present
age; he reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden
times—much talent, great independence of spirit,
and an austere, yet not repalsive aspect. If he goes
on quails ab incepto, I know few men who will de-
serve more praise, or obtain it. I must go and sce
him again. The rapid succession of adventure
since last summer, added to some serious uneasines
and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; In t
he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his
own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study
character in such situations.—He has been unshaken,
and will continue so. I don't think him deeply
versed in life ; he is the bigot of virtue (not religion),
and enamoured of the beauty of that g empty name'
as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every
day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opiniated, as
all men who are the centre of circler wide or narrow
—the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three are
gathered together, must be, and as even Johnson
was; but, withal, a valuable man, and less ♦ain than
success, and even the consciousness of preferring
the right to the expedient might excuse.
# O • o *

" Last night I supped with Lewis; and, as
usual, though I neither exceeded in solids nor fluids,
hare been half dead ever since. My stomach is
entirely destroyed by long abstinence, and the rest
will probably follow. Let it. I only wish the pain
over. The leap in the dark is the least to be
dreaded.

4" The Duke of . . called : I have told them
forty times that, except to half-a-dozen old and Sifrk,
cified acquaintances, lam invisible. Hit Grace is a
good, noble, ducal person ; but I am content to think
so at a distance ; and so—l w•as not at home.

" ' Galt called. Mem.—to ask some one to speak
to Raymond is favour of his plays. We are old fel-
low-travellers, and with all his eccentricities he has
ranch strong sense, experience of the world, and is,
as far as I have seen, a good natured philosophical
fellow. I showed him Sligo's Letters on the re-
ports of the Turkish Girl's tmenture at Athens soon
after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis and
Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen
it. Murray has a copy. I thought it had been un-
known, and wish it were ; but Sligo arrived only
some days after, and the rumours are the subject of
his letter. That shall preserve—it is as well.
Lewis and Galt were both terrified, and L. wondered
I did not introduce the situation into The Giaour.'
He may wonder; he might wonder more at that pro-
duction being written at all. But to describe the
feelings of that situation, were impwaible—it is icy
even to recollect them.

• • • • • • •
" Monday, Dec. 13, 1613.
" Allen (Lord Holland's Allen—the best in•
formed, and one of the ablest men I know—a per-
fect Magliabecchi—a devourer, a Hellus of books,
and an observer of men) has lent me a quantity of
Burns's unpublished, and never-to•be published
letters. They are full of oaths and obscene songs.
What an antithetical mind !—tenderness, roughness
—delicacy, coarseness—sentiment, sensuality—soar-
ing and grovelling, dirt and deity—all mixed up in
that one compound of inspired clay !
" It seems strange; a true voluptuary will never
abandon his mind to the grossness of reality. It is
by exalting the earthly, the material, the physique of
our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, by forgetting
them altogether, or at least never naming them
hardly to one's self, that we alone prevent them from
disgusting.
• • • • • • *

" Went to my box et Covent-garden to-night ;
and my delicacy felt a little shocked at seeing
S . . . s mistress (who, to my certain knowledge,
was actually educated from her birth for her pro-
fession), sitting with her mother, 'a three-piled
b—d, b—d-Major to the Army,' in a private
box opposite. I felt rather indignant; but casting
my eyes round the house, in the next box to me,
and the next, and the next, were the moat dis-
tinguished old and young Babylonians of quality;—
so I burst out a laughing. It was really odd ; Lady
. . divorced—Lady . . and her daughter, Lady
. . , both divorceable—Mrs. . . ,in the next,
the like, and still nearer ! What an
assemblage to me, who knew all their histories.
It was as if the house had been divided between your
public and your understood courtesans ;—but the
intriguantes much outnumbered the regular merce-
naries. On the other side were only Pauline and her
mother, and next box to her, three of inferior note.
Now where lay the difference between her 21famma,
and Lady . . and daughter? except that the
two last may enter Carlton and any other house,
and the two first are limited to the Opera and
b— house. How Ido delight in observing life
as it really is ! and myself, after all, the worst of any.
•

" lam getting rather into admiration of .
the youngest sister of . . A wife would be my
salvation. lam sure the wives of my acquaintances
have hitherto done me little good. . . . is
beautiful, but very young, and I think a fool. But
I have not seen enough to judge ; besides, I hate an
esprit in petticoats. That she won't love me is
very probable, nor shall I love her. But on my
system, and the modern system in general, that don't
signify. The business (if it came to business) would
probably be arranged between papa and me. She
would have her own way; I am good-humoured to
women, and docile; and if I did not fall in love
with her, which I should try to prevent, we should
be a very comfortable couple. As to conduct, that
she must look to But if I love

I shall be jealous;—and for that reason I hill not
IA in love. Though, after all, I doubt my temper,
and fear I should not be so patient as becomes the
bienseance of a married man in my station
Divorce ruins the poor femme, and damages are a
paltry compensation. 1 do fear my temper would
lead me into some of our Oriental tricks of ♦enge-
ance, or at any rate into a summary appeal to the
Court of twelve paces. So I'll none on't, but e'en
remain single and solitary ; though I should like to
have somebody now and then to yawn with one.
• • • • •

" W. is in sad enmity with the Whigs, about
this Review of Fox (if he did review him) ; all the
epigrammatists and essayists are at him. I hate
odds, and wish he may beat them. As for me, by
the blessing of indifference I have simplified my
politics into an utter detestation of all existing Go-
vernments; and as it is the shortest, and most
agreeable, and summary feeling imaginable, the first
moment of an universal republic would convert me
into an advocate for single and uncontradicted des-
potism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty
is slavery, all over the earth; and one sort of esta-
blishment is no better nor worse for a people than
another.' "

The frost was amazingly severe on Saturday
night and Sunday. The pavements and paths were ren-
dered dangerously slippery, owing to the sharp frost having
followed a alight thaw; but the slipperiness of the paths
was such in the suburbs, that foot passengers were ob-
liged to walk in the roads over which carriages had passed.
As proof of the icy state of the sides of the roads, a man
yesterday, at noon, skated along the side of the road from
Hammersmith to Kensington, in his way to the Perk !
Mr. GALT, who has so distinguished himself
by his publication of " The AyrshiFe Legatees," " Annals
of the Parish," &c. is about to publish a work of an en-
tirely original description, called " LAWRIE TODD, or the
Settlers in the Woods." LAWRIE TODD is the auto-
biography of a Scotchman who has been sometime in the
State of New York. Besides the peculiarities of kis own
character it will afford, we understand, views of society
and of scenes new in a great measure to literature, par
ticularly in the descriptions of the foundation and rise of
an American settlement with the moral effect of its pro-
gress on the dispositions of the different persons who oc-
cupy the foreground of the pictures. In this respect the
work will have special claims to attention : perhaps no
other writer has had equal Opportunities of acquiring exact
knowledge of operations so primitive and curious. En-
gaged in superintending an extensive settlement himself,
he has not, however, we are told, described merely the re-
sults of his own experience, but availed himself of all he hiss
seen and heard, which in any degree tended to augment
the interest of his subjects