CORRESPONDENCE, 1840-55. 219 



and I find that by stairs are meant passes down the cliff 1852. 

 natural passes. What are you and yours doing ? Do not fail 

 to tell me all about yourself, without my drawing it all out of 

 you by specific questions. By the way, is the Mr. Prickett I see 

 in the papers on whom somebody has been forging, any relation 

 of our old friend ? Of myself and family, nothing particular. 

 We're all about a year older since I last wrote to you. I have 

 been looking over and sorting correspondence of more than 

 twenty years, and I do not see any particular marks of growing 

 old in your handwriting. Are you not seriously contemplating 

 the necessity of calling yourself 50 years old if things go on as 

 they have been doing ? By my estimate of your age, you will 

 be saying 49 next birthday. I am 46 past, buf, between our- 

 selves, 1 have two of my wise teeth still to cut. 



I looked ont in the papers to see if you were moving or 

 seconding anybody into Convocation, or being done the same to 

 yourself. What do you think about the revival of Convo- 

 cation ? Did it ever happen to you to study any of their old pro- 

 ceedings ? Where are they all ? I remember that, a propos of 

 the Easter Question, I wanted the acts of the Convocation 

 which met next after the Restoration ; but, though Maitland 

 did all he could for me in the Archbishop's library, the return 

 was non est inventus. Maitland is now settled at Gloucester 

 again ; what doing I don't know. He is now well stricken in 

 years : thirty-five years ago he had completed Cambridge, had 

 been educated for the bar and practised, had got sick of it, had 

 retired, had married, and sat himself down comfortably at 

 Taunton, next door but one to his father, my mother being the 

 intermediate. I doubt his being less than thirty-five then, so that 

 he must be seventy, I should say, at least and he looks it. At 

 Taunton he used to collect books and play the fiddle, and my first 

 acquaintance with Haydn's twelve was made through him and 

 his sister-in-law. He also bound his books himself, and he bound 

 the upright of his bookshelves, and lettered them ' Maitland's 

 Works,' at which his friends used to pull with great curiosity to 

 know what he had written ; and those who did not pull thought 

 it very odd that he should write so many thin volumes on 

 equidistant subjects. 



I wrote you a note to see if you knew who A. E. B. of Leeds 

 was. I suppose you do riot. He shines in a publication called 

 Notes and Queries, which I take in, and find a great deal of mis- 

 cellaneous in it. Did you know James Parker, the vice-chan- 



