As to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised them: this being one reason.

Not very many years ago my brother Charles was offered Nottingham if he would pay L3000 for the honour,--and so I failed to appreciate any such distinction.

I think too that votes were at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.
At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,--De Morgan, who had the business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.
* * * * * I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839, which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my father to get me an Indian Writership,--as also that previously I had once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given to Mr.Lyster.The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my good father's efforts and my own;--and explains itself.

In those days it cost 9d.

between Albury and London.
My Dearest Father,--I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India .-- I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes.