"Never," he writes to his friend Holroyd, "never pretend to allure me by painting in odious colours the dust of London.

I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald it is to visit you, and not your trees." His ideal was to devote the morning, commencing early--at seven, say--to study, and the afternoon and evening to society and recreation, not "disdaining the innocent amusement of a game at cards." And this plan of a happy life he very fairly realised in his little house in Bentinck Street.

The letters that we have of his relating to this period are buoyant with spirits and self-congratulation at his happy lot.

He writes to his step-mother that he is every day more satisfied with his present mode of life, which he always believed was most calculated to make him happy.

The stable and moderate stimulus of congenial society, alternating with study, was what he liked.