Brantwood, 13th September, 1877

1. I really thought Fors would have been true to its day, this month; but just as it was going to press, here is something sent me by my much-honoured friend Frederick Gale (who told me of the race-horse and kitten), which compels me to stop press to speak of it.

It is the revise of a paper which will be, I believe, in Bailys Magazine by the time this Fors is printed;—a sketch of English manners and customs in the days of Fielding (whom Mr. Gale and I agree in holding to be a truly moral novelist, and worth any quantity of modern ones since Scott's death,—be they who they may).

But my friend, though an old Conservative, seems himself doubtful whether things may not have been a little worse managed, in some respects, then, than they are now: and whether some improvements may not really have taken place in the roads,—postage, and the like: and chiefly his faith in the olden time seems to have been troubled by some reminiscences he has gathered of the manner of inflicting capital punishment in the early Georgian epochs.