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 chance of sailing; the wind is right against us, and a great deal of it, so we shall probably cross over to Ryde this afternoon, and wait there, as a cleaner and quieter place. There is such a dreadful quantity of people here, all bursting into the room at all moments; and a tribe of Sir Johns and Sir Henrys, whom George knows, and who come with offers of dinners, which we have declined.

Your long letter is a great comfort to me. I shall keep it, and study it the ﬁrst time I am able to ﬁx my eyes on anything; but I do not feel at all as if I pursued my wretched way so evenly as you say I do—quite the contrary. The last ten days at the Admiralty I think I was in a fair way to go quietly and genteelly mad—what with regrets and annoyances, and one thing and another. I am better since we have been here, and that the actual work is undertaken; and, after all, I keep thinking that if I had come down to see George off, and not to go with him, how very much worse it would have been. In short, that would have been out of the question, and there certainly is nothing that he has not deserved from us. Robert is here, and a great comfort to us. We have just