“Your letter and enclosure are safe; but ‘English gentlemen’ are very rare—­at least in Venice.  I doubt whether there are at present any, save, the consul and vice-consul, with neither of whom I have the slightest acquaintance.  The moment I can pounce upon a witness, I will send the deed properly signed:  but must he necessarily be genteel?  Venice is not a place where the English are gregarious; their pigeon-houses are Florence, Naples, Rome, &c.; and to tell you the truth, this was one reason why I stayed here till the season of the purgation of Rome from these people, which is infected with them at this time, should arrive.  Besides, I abhor the nation and the nation me; it is impossible for me to describe my own sensation on that point, but it may suffice to say, that, if I met with any of the race in the beautiful parts of Switzerland, the most distant glimpse or aspect of them poisoned the whole scene, and I do not choose to have the Pantheon, and St. Peter’s, and the Capitol, spoiled for me too.  This feeling may be probably owing to recent events; but it does not exist the less, and while it exists, I shall conceal it as little as any other.

“I have been seriously ill with a fever, but it is gone.  I believe or suppose it was the indigenous fever of the place, which comes every year at this time, and of which the physicians change the name annually, to despatch the people sooner.  It is a kind of typhus, and kills occasionally.  It was pretty smart, but nothing particular, and has left me some debility and a great appetite.  There are a good many ill at present, I suppose, of the same.

“I feel sorry for Horner, if there was any thing in the world to make him like it; and still more sorry for his friends, as there was much to make them regret him.  I had not heard of his death till by your letter.

“Some weeks ago I wrote to you my acknowledgments of Walter Scott’s article.  Now I know it to be his, it cannot add to my good opinion of him, but it adds to that of myself. He, and Gifford, and Moore, are the only regulars I ever knew who had nothing of the garrison about their manner:  no nonsense, nor affectations, look you!  As for the rest whom I have known, there was always more or less of the author about them—­the pen peeping from behind the ear, and the thumbs a little inky, or so.

“’Lalla Rookh’—­you must recollect that, in the way of title, the ‘Giaour’ has never been pronounced to this day; and both it and Childe Harold sounded very facetious to the blue-bottles of wit and humour about town, till they were taught and startled into a proper deportment; and therefore Lalla Rookh, which is very orthodox and oriental, is as good a title as need be, if not better.  I could wish rather that he had not called it ‘a Persian Tale;’ firstly, because we have had Turkish Tales, and Hindoo Tales, and Assyrian Tales, already; and