I am truly glad to find that your good spirits put you upon writing what you call nonsense, and so much of it; but I assure you it all passed with me for very agreeable sense, or something better, and continues to do so even in this learned spot; which you will not be surprised to hear, when I tell you that at a dinner-party the other day, I heard a Head of a House, a clergyman also, gravely declare, that the rotten boroughs, as they are called, should instantly be abolished without compensation to their owners; that slavery should be destroyed with like disregard of the _claims_ (for rights he would allow none) of the proprietors, and a multitude of extravagances of the same sort.

Therefore say I, Vive la Bagatelle; motley is your only wear.
[117] _Memoirs_, ii.

230-1.
You tell me kindly that you have often asked yourself where is Mr.
Wordsworth, and the question has readily been solved for you.

He is at Cambridge: a great mistake! So late as the 5th of November, I will tell you where I was, a solitary equestrian entering the romantic little town of Ashford in the Waters, on the edge of Wilds of Derbyshire, at the close of day, when guns were beginning to be left [let ?] off and squibs to be fired on every side.

So that I thought it prudent to dismount and lead my horse through the place, and so on to Bakewell, two miles farther.