Letter from William Bodham Donne, Bury St. Edmunds, to Frederick Walpole Keppel, 1848 September 1 : autograph manuscript signed.

Reflecting on the truth of Shelley's claim that "When a man marries dies or turns Hindoo his friends then hear no more of him", and concluding that "letter-writing is rather the mark of a restless mind"; describing his recent experiences attending the balls at Bury; commenting on the "fiz at Vienna" (i.e., the Vienna uprising of October 1848), which he compares to the dilemma in Sheridan's "The Critic", "where the uncles cannot stab Whiskerandos for fear Whiskerandos should stab them, and the nieces cannot stab themselves for fear of their uncles"; remarking on a piece in the Norwich Mercury crediting England's associations for rewarding agricultural labourers for the country's "exemption from revolutions", a claim he counters with the observation that only a few "gain the prizes" so that a many remain "whose hands may not be equally tied up from rows."