JET, 26.]

LETTERS.

133

day at this season. I am just come from Nevis, where I havebeen visiting Miss Parry Herbert and a young Widow; 4 thetwo latter known to Charles Boyles. Great inquiries afterhim by the damsels in that Island . My trial comes on to-morrow, 5 but I am sure of casting my gentleman.

TO THE REVEREND MR. W. NELSON, BURNHAM.

[Autograph, in the Nelson Papers.]

Boreas, St. Kitt's, June 28th, 1785.

My dear Brother,

Your letters up to the 1st of May I have regularly re-ceived, and many thanks I return for your kind remembranceof me. This letter must be short, for my time for this sixweeks has been all Law. I will write more fully in about aweek; but I did not like to let a Packet sail without acknow-ledging the receipt of yours, my Father’s, Mrs. Bolton’s, andKate’s letters. Tell them I will write the moment I have myhands at liberty.

You ask when I may return to England ? How can youwho have been at Sea ask such a question ? How can Ipossibly tell? and I never guess. If you sincerely ask myopinion relative to your coming out to this infernal climate,1 can only tell you it is a thing I should never think

4 Mrs. Nisbet, afterwards Viscountess Nelson. Vide p. 21 7, post. Mrs. Nisbethad shortly before received the following account of her future husband in a letterfrom a female friend :

44 We have at last seen the Captain of the Boreas, of whom so much has beensaid. Ue came up just before dinner, much heated, and was very silent *, yetseemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking anywine ; but after dinner, when the President, as usual, gave the following toasts,8 the King,’ 4 the Queen and Royal Family,’and 4 Lord Hood/ this strange manregularly filled his glass, and observed, that those were always bumper toasts withhim ; which having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into hisformer taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to makeout his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour,with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Beingplaced by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all thecivilities in my power; but I drew out little more than k Yes’ and ‘No.’ Ifyou, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him ;for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people .—Clarkeand Arthur^ vol. i. p. 37.

5 Videp. 136.