1 6 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, i 



I am sure she will infinitely happier and happier the 

 longer I live to enjoy my good fortune. Lyell and Madame 

 gave me a very long and solemn lecture on the extreme im- 

 portance, for our future comfort during our whole London 

 lives, of choosing slowly and deliberately our visiting 

 acquaintance: every disagreeable or commonplace ac- 

 quaintance must separate us from our relations and real 

 friends (that is without we give up our whole lives to 

 visiting), for the evenings we sacrifice might have been 

 spent with them or at the theatre. Lyell said we shall find 

 the truth of his words before we have lived a year in London. 

 How provokingly small the paper is, my own very dear 



Emma. 



Good-night, C. D. 



Emma Wedgwood to Monsieur and Madame Sismondi. 



MY DEAR UNCLE, MAER, Friday, Dec. 28, 1838. 



I have been a long time without thanking you for 

 your kind, affectionate letter, which gave me the greatest 

 pleasure, but I have been away to London with Fanny 

 and Hensleigh to help Charles to look for a house. I 

 thought we should only have to walk out into the street 

 and take one, but we found it very difficult, and after a 

 fortnight's hard work I came home without having taken 

 any, but I heard yesterday that Charles had succeeded in 

 taking one that we had very much set our hearts upon 

 in Gower Street, so that is very pleasantly settled. 



How I should enjoy coming to see you and my dear 

 aunt Jessie; and I have some hopes that we shall accom- 

 plish it some day or other, as Charles has the most lively 

 wish to see Switzerland and the Alps, and then I should 

 send him off to geologise at Chamounix by himself, and I 

 should stay with you. But I am afraid it cannot be this 

 year or next either, he is too busy. I quite agree with you 

 in the happiness of having plenty to do. You don't seem 

 at all afraid of making me vain in what you say, but indeed, 

 I don't think you will give me any worse feeling than the 



