“It will not seem strange to your Lordship,” he says, in answer, “that I should feel some desire to visit a portion of the earth which has been so frequently present to my imagination, or that this desire should be increased by the accommodation so generously proposed to me by your Lordship. But, however forcible these inducements may be, there are others which are still more powerful, and which prohibit me from indulging even a distant expectation of such an excursion. With the claims of a wife and eight children on my attention, I should feel little gratification in any pleasures which required a long absence from home, whilst the improvement of an extensive tract of waste moss land in the vicinity of Manchester calls for my constant superintendence. To say the truth, too, the striking picture your Lordship has given of the great seat of arms in ancient, and of arts in modern times, might almost shake the resolution of any one who was not determined, like Orpheus of old, to drag the object of his adoration from the jaws of hell itself. Under these united impressions, I must relinquish all idea of availing myself of your Lordship’s goodness, assuring you, however, that I shall always hold it in the most grateful remembrance.”
