CHAPTER XXVI 



Letter to 



Madrid, April 29. 

 You were once pleased to observe, dearest critic, that my 

 letters were generally the most amusing when they were 

 about nothing at all. It would have been more compli- 

 mentary to have put it, " When they were about nothing 

 particular," for that is my favourite and most usual style : 

 and indeed I now take up my pen to scribble you a line or 

 two before we start for Cuenca, being precisely in the pre- 

 dicament of having nothing particular to say. 



The first axiom of letter-writing is, "Put pen to paper, and 

 you may depend something will come of it." What a com- 

 mon and ridiculous excuse heads half the letters of one's 

 dearest friends : — " I have been intending to write to you 

 the last six months, but I had nothing particular to say." 

 I always answer on such occasions, " Then why the deuce 

 didn't you write, and %ay nothing particular ? " 



It is a week since I wrote last ; and I have got so much 

 infected with a vicious habit of correspondence, that the 

 desire of writing comes upon me independent of any 

 plethoric secretion of epistolary elements. 



I am drawn to my blotting-book as the best representa- 

 tive I can find in Madrid of your portals in Berkeley Square. 

 While I write to you, I am in your society, as much as 



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