I am sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as this. It can't be helped.

The western coast of Scotland is a most strange place; it is composed of rocks, mountains, mountainous and rocky islands, intersected by lochs; you can go but a short distance any where from salt-water in the Highlands.

I assure you I often long for a seat and a cup o' tea at Well Walk, especially now that the mountains, castles, and lakes are becoming common to me. Yet I would rather summer it out, for on the whole I am happier than when I have time to be glum perhaps it may cure me. Immediately on my return I shall begin studying hard, with a peep at the theatre now and then. I have a slight sore throat, and think it better to stay a day or two at Oban: then we shall proceed to Fort William and Inverness. Brown, in his letters, puts down every little circumstance; I should like to do the same, but I confess myself too indolent, and besides, next winter they will come up in prime order as we speak of such and such things.

Remember me to all, including Mr. and Mrs. Bentley. Your most affectionate brother,

JOHN.

No. 10.

TO MRS. WYLIE, THE MOTHER OF HIS SISTER-IN-LAW.

MY DEAR MADAM:

INVERNESS, August 6, 1818.

It was a great regret to me that I should leave all my friends, just at the moment when I might

have helped to soften away the time for them. I wanted not to leave my brother Tom, but more especially, believe me, I should like to have remained near you, were it but for an atom of consolation after parting with so dear a daughter. My brother George has ever been more than a brother to me; he has been my greatest friend, and I can never forget the sacrifice you have made for his happiness. As I walk along the mountains here I am full of these things, and lay in wait, as it were, for the pleasure of seeing you immediately on my return to town. I wish, above all things, to say a word of comfort to you, but I know not how. It is impossible to prove that black is white; it is impossible to make out that sorrow is joy, or joy is sorrow.

Tom tells me that you called on Mrs. Haslam, with a newspaper giving an account of a gentleman in a fur cap falling over a precipice in Kircudbrightshire. If it was me, I did it in a dream, or in some magic interval between the first and second cup of tea; which is nothing extraordinary when we hear that Mahomet, in getting out of bed, upset a jug of water, and whilst it was falling, took a fortnight's trip, as it seemed, to Heaven; yet was back in time to save one drop of water being spilt. As for fur caps, I do not remember one beside my own, except at Carlisle: this was a very good fur cap I met in High-street, and I dare say was the unfortunate one. I dare say that the Fates, seeing but two fur caps in the north, thought it too extraordinary, and so threw the dies which of them should be drowned. The lot fell upon Jones: I

dare say his name was Jones. All I hope is that the gaunt ladies said not a word about hanging; if they did I shall repeat that I was not half-drowned in Kircudbright. Stop! let me see!-being halfdrowned by falling from a precipice is a very romantic affair: why should I not take it to myself? How glorious to be introduced in a drawing-room to a lady who reads novels, with "Mr. So-and-soMiss So-and-so; Miss So-and-so, this is Mr. So-andso, who fell off a precipice and was half-drowned." Now I refer to you, whether I should lose so fine an opportunity of making my fortune. No romance lady could resist me none. Being run under a wagon, side-lamed in a play-house, apoplectic through brandy, and a thousand other tolerably decent things for badness, would be nothing; but being tumbled over a precipice into the sea-oh! it would make my fortune- especially if you could continue to hint, from this bulletin's authority, that I was not upset on my own account, but that I dashed into the waves after Jessy of Dumblane, and pulled her out by the hair; —but that, alas! she was dead, or she would have made me happy with her hand. However, in this you may use your own discretion. But I must leave joking, and seriously aver that I have been very romantic indeed among these mountains and lakes. I have got wet through, day after day; eaten oat-cake and drank whisky; walked up to my knees in bog; got a sore throat; gone to see Icolmkill and Staffa ; met with unwholesome food, just here and there, as it happened; went up Ben Nevis, and N. B., came down again: sometimes, when I am rather

tired, I lean rather languishingly on a rock, and long for some famous beauty to get down from her palfrey in passing, approach me, with her saddlebags, and give me a dozen or two capital roastbeef sandwiches.

When I come into a large town, you know there is no putting one's knapsack into one's fob, so the people stare. We have been taken for spectaclevenders, razor-sellers, jewelers, traveling linendrapers, spies, excisemen, and many things I have no idea of. When I asked for letters at Port Patrick, the man asked, "What regiment?" I have had a peep also at little Ireland. Tell Henry I have not camped quite on the bare earth yet, but nearly as bad in walking through Mull; for the shepherds' huts you can scarcely breathe in for the smoke, which they seem to endeavour to preserve for smoking on a large scale.

I assure you, my dear madam, that one of the greatest pleasures I shall have on my return, will be seeing you, and that I shall ever be

Yours, with the greatest respect and sincerity,

No. 11.

JOHN KEATS.

MY DEAR George:

OCTOBER 29, 1818.

There was a part in your letter which gave me great pain; that where you lament not receiving letters from England. I intended to have written immediately upon my return from Scotland (which

was two months earlier than I intended, on account of my own, as well as Tom's health), but then I was told by Mrs. Wylie' that you had said you did not wish any one to write till we had heard from you. This I thought odd, and now I know it could not have been so. Yet at the time I suffered my unreflecting head to be satisfied, and went on in that sort of careless and restless life with which you are well acquainted. I am grieved to say that I am not sorry you had not letters at Philadelphia; you could have had no good. news of Tom; and I have been withheld from beginning these many days. I could not bring myself to say the truth, that he is no better, but much worse; however, it must be told, and you, my dear brother and sister, take example from me and bear up against any calamity, for my sake as I

do for yours. Ours are ties which, independent

of their own sentiment, are sent us by Providence, to prevent the effects of one great solitary grief. I have Fanny, and I have you-three people whose happiness to me is sacred, and it does annul that selfish sorrow which I should otherwise fall into, living as I do with poor Tom, who looks upon me as his only comfort. The tears will come

'The mother of George Keats's wife.

2

Fanny Keats, his sister. She married Señor Llanos, a Spanish gentleman of liberal politics and great talent. He was the author of "Don Esteban," "Sandoval, the Freemason," and other romantic illustrations of the modern

history of the Peninsula. He was not many years ago Minister of the Spanish Republic to the Court of Rome. One of the sons, Juan Llanos y Keats, is a painter who has won much fame in Spain. Mme. Llanos is still living in Madrid.