Dear Miss Wordsworth, -- You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy [1] before I ventured to express a prediction, Till yesterday I had barely seen him, -- _Virgilium tantum vidi_; but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm; so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own. " But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's _bon mots_, but the following are a few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river, at least, -- which was a touch of the comparative; but then he added in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a political economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week toll.
Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another question, as to the flux and reflux; which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, "Then it must come to the same thing at last," -- which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard, -- so impossible is it for Nature, in any of her works, to come up to the standard of a child's imagination! The whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were dead; and on particular inquiry, his old friend the orang-outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to exchange this transitory world for another or none. But, again, there was a golden eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console him.
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