of her; but at last together we made her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last century.  St. Paul’s church is a heap of ruins; the Monument isn’t half so high as you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down which the ravages of time had rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows whither,—­and all this has taken place while you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelled with a—­ or a—.  For aught I see, you had almost as well remain where you are, and not come, like a Struldbrug, into a world where few were born when you went away.  Scarce here and there one will be able to make out your face; all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age.  Your way of mathematics has already given way to a new method which, after all, is, I believe, the old doctrine of Maclaurin new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the negative quantity of fluxions from Euler.

Poor Godwin!  I was passing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate churchyard.  There are some verses upon it, written by Miss—­, which if I thought good enough I would send you.  He was one of those who would have hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clamors, but with the complacent gratulations of a philosopher anxious to promote knowledge, as leading to happiness; but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould.  Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or two before.  Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to a bookseller proposing an epic poem on the “Wandering of Cain,” in twenty-four books.  It is said he has left behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divinity:  but few of them in a state of completion.  They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices.  You see what mutation the busy hand of Time has produced, while you have consumed in foolish, voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends, benefited your country—­But reproaches are useless.  Gather up the wretched relics, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home.  I will rub my eyes and try to recognize you.  We will shake withered hands together, and talk of old things,—­of St. Mary’s church and the barber’s opposite, where the young students in mathematics used to assemble.  Poor Crisp, that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer’s shop in Trumpington Street, and for aught I know resides there still; for I saw the name up in the last journey I took there with my sister just before she died.  I suppose you heard that I had left the India House and gone into the Fishmongers’ Almshouses over the bridge.  I have a little cabin there, small and homely; but you shall be welcome to it.  You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I’ll get you some if you come in oyster time.  Marshall, Godwin’s old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces you used to make. [1]