You think I live in Epicurean ease; but this happens to
be a jolly day: one isn't always well, or tolerably good, the weather is
not always clear, nor nightingales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant
atrocity. But such as life is, I believe I have got hold of a good end
of it....
Give my love to Thackeray from your upper window across the street.
... I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close
by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer, which I tap
myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I
have also just concocted two gallons of tar-water under the directions
of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a
careful skimming, and then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be
tried first on my old woman; if she survives, I am to begin; and it will
then gradually spread into the parish, through England, Europe, etc.,
"as the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake."
... Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in a
house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right through it into
some scene-behind-scene world on the other side, as harlequins do? A
steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of it
ironically tempts one to outrage it. One feels it would close again over
the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened.
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