TALBOT857

Cantileu ¹
20^th Nov.

My dear Henry

It is very ungrateful of you never to have answered my register of the weather so faithfully kept for your sake, I conclude you have now left off yours, but I go on with mine till I hear from you. Lately it has been but a brumous ²journal & certainly I cannot recommend the Département de Seine Inferieure per hyemale. ³ You are now very busy about nothing as I heard you were resting from your labours, which were I conclude very intense at Ilfracombe. ⁴ You never told me whether that place struck you as at all like any description of it. You will probably now hear enough of the Manchester Magistrates,⁵ they have lit a flame which will spread from one end of the Kingdom to the other, but I am not at all afraid of a Revolution, tho' the French are all persuaded we are on the eve of one. They are going to have a stormy session themselves. I wish we were to be at the opening of it, but we shall not be at Paris till the 6. December, as our house will not be vacant till the 5. Direct to N^o 2. Sackville Street ⁶ & it will come in the Government Bag. M^r F. ⁷ has made a new arrangement this time & I hope it will succeed better than the last. Caroline ⁸ has been ill with a very bad cough & we had D^r Flaubert⁹ from Rouen, who is reckoned very clever & who ought to be popular, for he would hardly take his fee & advised nothing but simples¹⁰ & surtout point de Medecins ni de medecines. ¹¹ Very unlike the M. Ds of England.

How glad I am that you are to come to us at Paris at Easter, I long to renew my acquaintance with you, as we meet at such dreadfully long intervals.

William ¹² is returning from Russia, as the climate does not agree with him I suppose he is by this time in England The last I heard of him was that he was just setting off in a party of pleasure to a villa 2000 versts^<13> from Petersburgh. We have got a new Governess she is Anglaise. I wish she may do but she has all the cold manners & reserve of her nation. I hope the abominable conduct of the Coroners ¹³ will be brought before Parliament. "as moral liberty is the prime blessing of Man in his private capacity so is civil liberty in his public capacity. There is nothing that requires more to be watched than Power. There is nothing that ought to be watched opposed with more determined resolution than its encroachment. Sleep in a State as Montesquieu ¹⁴ says will is always followed by Slavery. Pray write to me very soon, I now find we shall be at Paris the 3^d December.

I wonder you did not go & see Nettlecombe as it belongs to the Grandfather of your friend Trevelyan ¹⁵ -

Yrs
E F

W. H. Fox Talbot Esq^r
Trinity College
Cambridge
Angleterre