Page:Prose works, from the original editions (Volume 1).djvu/401

 *soled. For we have spent, as you may imagine, a miserable five months.

Good-bye, my dear Hunt,

Your affectionate friend,

P .B. S.

I have had no letter from you for a month.

, Nov. 23rd, 1819.

,—Why don't you write to us? I was preparing to send you something for your "Indicator," but I have been a drone instead of a bee in this business, thinking that perhaps, as you did not acknowledge any of my late enclosures, it would not be welcome to you, whatever I might send.

What a state England is in! But you will never write politics. I don't wonder;—but I wish, then, that you would write a paper in "The Examiner," on the actual state of the country, and what, under all the circumstances of the conflicting passions and interests of men, we are to expect. Not what we ought to expect, or what, if so and so were to happen, we might expect,—but what, as things are, there is reason to believe will come;—and send it me for my information. Every word a man has to say is valuable to the public now; and thus you will at once gratify your friend, nay, instruct, and either exhilarate him or force him to be resigned,—and awaken the minds of the people.

I have no spirits to write what I do not know whether you will care much about; I know well, that if I were in great misery, poverty, &c., you would think of nothing else but how to amuse and relieve me. You omit me if I am prosperous.

I could laugh if I found a joke, in order to put you in good humour with me after my scolding;—in good humour enough to write to us. * * * * * Affec