TALBOT685

Castleford ¹

March 22^d 1816.

My Dear Mamma,

Your Letter ² seems to say that Ministers exerted themselves to the utmost – M^r Barnes ³ thinks they did not, because else M^r Wortley ⁴ would have voted with them, & many other members – M^r Rob^t Milnes, ⁵ the member for Pontefract, would have voted with them, if he had been in Town. You did not send me Tuesday’s Chronicle, ⁶ the most interesting of all, with the debate in it – Pray send it – I liked your last dévise extremely. – Have you got the common one of the Helianthus in your collection I must make one remark on your dévises ⁷ – All your hearts are drawn thus <illustration> – Is that right? Ought not they to be so <illustration>? I know they are as you draw them on Court Cards – but in Botany a lilac leaf is said to be cordate <illustration> and this shape <illustration> is called obcordate or inversely cordate – Pray ask M^r Forbes’s opinion – Who told you about my tumbling into Coalpits? ⁸ I take better care – I have just finished Barthelemi’s Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, ⁹ which is I believe, the longest work I ever read – He might have made the story vastly more interesting, if he had liked – How many incidents might he not have introduced in twenty-seven years! The only affecting ones which he has, are the death of his two most intimate friends, one of whom was killed at the battle of Mantinea, ¹⁰ & the other, twenty-four years after at the battle of Chæronea ¹¹– upon which he renounces the world, & retires to the Borysthenes ¹² –

So no more at present from

Y^r Aff^te Son

W. H. F. Talbot

Lady Eliz. Feilding