Without a joke out of, from, belonging, appertaining unto, respecting, or concerning, or on, or about, my head—but, seriously, intending and devising how to obtain or procure it—I say, seriously, "I wish I may get it."

Your letter, courting the infliction of penalties I proposed, would be a baffler, were I to let you have your wicked wish, epistolarily, (see Johnson) or visitorially. I can neither write nor see you—"Come and hear the grasshoppers." In truth I hear enough of "the Grasshopper in Gracechurch Street," and I almost premise, from these premises, I shall never be able to go in search of another. You tell me of "shores" & "skies" & mouldering ruins" in Norfolk (or, 'save you, Suffolk)—I beg to tell you that, from the room in which I write at this instant, the old walls of the X keys innThis is the Crosse Keys public house, still in business, in Gracechurch Street.[return] are before me, & confine my view to the sky only and I now the "common shore" at every change of the weather. Think of that, Master Robert, in "this blessed month of June," and wonder, when I tell you, that I am content. I have little of encumbrances, but many duties upon me, and have suffered too much from waywardness, to give way to fidgetty wants & wishes. It would pleasure me, and do me much good, to have the run of a friend's house in the country this summer, but I must walk cautiously about my own, & there only, or the "Grasshopper" will cease to hop as it ought.

I caught up a pamphlet at John Atkinson's which you advised him to read, & brought it away to read myself—"Mr. Beverley's Pamphlet"—it is a most tremendoous blow, & if he follows it up, will be "the beginning of the end."The pamphlet is Robert Mackenzie Beverley's "A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of York, on the Present Corrupt State of the Church of England" (1831). The pamphlet offers a damning assessment of what Beverley sees as the self-satisfied corruption of the established church. A small sample will give a sense of Beverley's rhetoric: "The Church of England, as it is now constituted, is a machine of Anti-Christ, greatly surpassing, in the grossness of its abuses, all other jobs or systems of corruption that ever have afflicted the kingdom; and so much mischief has it done to religion, besides all the political enormities with which it may be charged, that all pious persons should hail with shouts of joy, that high and holy day, now not far distant, when the Church of England will be abolished by act of Parliament, deprived entirely of all its revenues, and put on an equality with the other Christian sects tolerated in this country” (16). [return] Clearly he is a young man, & throws away much of his power, by his fierceness. If he does not cool, or fanaticise, into weakness, he has the bull by the horns, & notwithstanding some monstrous exaggerations, he, alone, may bring down the whole enormous mass of clerical encumbrance. Still, to my eye, he is not the man who will achieve this—much he can & will do—he knows the great points, & therefore cannot fail of doing much—but to effect, all, a man who attempts it must be a lover of the truth for the truth's sake, forget himself wholly, be unmoved by scorn & threats, and, above all, be sensible to the greater calamity—which besets well-doers, & obstructs their well-doing—praise. Singleness of purpose is the essential requisite to an honest & able reformer—Mr. Beverley has the ability, is he honest? If he is, why does he judge so unsparkingly? I confess I do not admire certain wholsesale denunciations of estimated numbers. The cause of which he volunteers to be the champion is too good, or in might be vitally injured by some of his misrepresentations—nor does it require the aid of such auxiliaries as his clap-trap, about restoring the churches to their former owners, seems to entice: scrupulous readers may incline to imagine something esoteric in the meaning of thos passages.

However, the cause, as I said, is good—but it cannot be worked out to its fulness of result by unholy hands—neither will the accomplishment of the work be delayed unduly, by its remaining for a time unattempted. One of the very good portions of Mr. Beverley's pamphlet, which must tell with every one, is the irrefutable exposition of the fact, that the Church with all its corruptions has reformed nothing since it was established. It has not—it can not—and for this reason, it dare not move—and it being of the nature of corruption to extend, the putrescence has enlarged with increasing years—the longer it remains the worse it will become—"it must become worse." Shall I tell you a true story? A young medical friend of mine from the North, had an infant patient, which he was called to after it was beyond his skill to help. The child died, and in a few days the father brought the body to him with a request to preserve it & inject the veins & arteries—they differed about the charge & negotiated day after day, the child remaining all the while in the surgeon's cellar, till the parents' ardour for preservation cooled, & the body became a nuisance—the more it smelt, the more my friend pestered the father with messages to take it away, & the more inclined was the fond parent not to meddle with it—at length the smell wholly ceased & the body was almost forgotten when Tim the surgeon observed, in place if it, a shapeless mass of blue mould—so it remianed till, the last time I asked him about it, and then he told me it had wasted & withered, melted & dried, that it almost defied discrimination to detect what it had been—at first it was too noisome to tolerate, and now "it's past," as Tim says, "egad sir, it's past throwing away."

Yours finally & sincerely W. Hone.

[Hone continues the letter with an afterthought:]

P.S. Mind—no more letters from me. I find reading & writing bad things. Reading is a lazy-making employment, & writing a worthless one, & above all things I hate letter writing—I cannot write letters of business, U no Y & my other letters, having no others to write, always run into length. I took up this sheet merely to say that I wrote you before, when I was hypp'd from keeping indoors, & that all I desired & desire amounts to this—that, as soon as you can, I shall really be glad if you will let me have the cast of my head, for my wife & girls desire to see it. To this I add that, as a particular favor, I request you will put on paper a plain (not a jocose) statement of the developments, & absence of development, as they appear from the cast. If you are a cunning man you will hesitate—if you are honest you will do it at once, &, if there be truth in Phrenology, you will find enough upon my skull to assure you that you may safely communicate the truth & the whole truth to me, for whose eye alone it is intended. I make this request in sober earnestness—