"ANN! My black silk—go to my room—murdered who? why—Castor.

"Now try and get some sleep. If I find you with papers I'll burn them. Oh! there go all the drags and Mr. M—— on the box—and there go the 4.45, 5.15, and 5.25 to Baker St.—The days fly! But it's a glorious life. Work! Work!—Keep quiet, dear—I shall be back directly."

TO A.E.

"Sheffield House," New Quay, Dartmouth. June 4, 1874.

... The above I find is our correct address, though what I sent you is all-sufficient, especially as you can't land without our seeing you out of our window, as we are almost within speaking distance of the steamer....

From Exeter here the line is lovely. Half the way you run along the shore. The fields ploughed and meadowed, and with trees, and cattle come down to the shore. [Sketch.]

TORBAY is in this line. The cliffs are a deep red sandstone, the sky deep blue, and the fields deep green!! [Sketch.]

At Dawlish, Torquay, etc. the jutting rocks of worn-away sandstone mark the points of the little bays with fantastic looking shapes, like petrified giants. [Sketch.]

Looking back from Teignmouth is a very curious one on which the sea-birds sit. Bless their noses! and their legs! How they do enjoy the waves! [Sketch.]

Those lazy ripples damp their boots so nicely!

In the Exeter Station sat a —— [Sketch] Bull Dogue. O dear! He looked so "savidge," and was so nervous; every train made him tremble in every limb! I bought him a penny bun, but he was too nervous to eat, though he looked very grateful. The porter promised me to give him plenty of water, and as I gave the porter plenty of coppers I hope he did!

Tell Stephen the flowers on the railway banks give you quite a turn! Crimson, pale pink, and dead-white Valerian against a deep blue sky in hot sunshine make one not know whether to PAINT or press!

As to Dartmouth itself it is a mixture of Matlock, Whitby and Antwerp!!! The defect is it is really oil the river, not on the sea, but the neighbouring bays are so get-at-able we have settled here. The town is very old. Some of the streets, or rather terraces—if a perfectly irregular perching and jumbling of houses up and down a steep lull can be called a terrace—are very curious. [Sketch.]

Flowers everywhere....

TO H.K.F.G.

July 12, 1874.

Dr. Edghill preached a fine sermon this morning on "Friend! wherefore art thou come?" Terribly didactic on the fate of Judas, but the practical application was wonderful and so like him! It being chiefly on the "patient love of Christ." Quite merciless on Judas, and on the coarseness, coldness and brutalness of betrayal by the tenderest sign of human love. "But" (plunging head-first among the Engineers!) "if there's any man sitting here with a heart and conscience every bit as black as Judas's in that hour: to thee, Brother, in this hour—in thy worst and vilest hour—Jesus speaks—'Friend!—You may have worn out human love, you may try your hardest to wear out Mine'"—(parenthesis to the A.S.C. and a nautical hitch of half his surplice)—("and we all try hard enough, that's certain!)—'but you never can—Friend, still My Friend!'" (Pull up, and obvious need of bronchial troches. Tonsure mopped and a re-commencement.) "Then there's the appeal to the conscience as well as to the heart. Wherefore art thou come? what art thou about—what is thy object? I tell you what, I believe if Judas had answered this in plain language to himself he would have stopped short even then. And we should stop short of many a sin if we'd face what we're going to do" (Dangerous precipitation of the whole Chaplain at the heads of the privates below.) "Some of you ask yourselves that question to-day—this evening as you're walking to Aldershot, 'Wherefore am I come?' And don't let the Devil put something else into your head, but just answer it," etc. etc.

He's not exactly an equal or a finished preacher for highly educated ears, but that sort of transparent candour which he has makes him very affecting when on his favourite topic, the inexhaustible love of God. His face when he quotes—"The Son of God Who loved Me and gave Himself for Me," is like a man showing the Rock he has clung to himself in shipwreck.

TO C.T.G.

X Lines. July 22, 1874.

DEAREST CHARLIE,

It was a great disappointment not to see you! Now don't fail me next week—you scoundrel! I want you most particularly for most selfish reasons. I am just taking my hero[38] into Victoria Docks, and want to dip my brush in Couleur locale with your help. Do come, and we'll go up to London by barge and sketch all the way!!! I know an A1 Bargemaster, and we can get beds at the inns en route. A two days' voyage! Or we can go for a shorter period and come home by rail. It won't cost us much.

[Footnote 38: "A Great Emergency," vol. xi.]

I am so glad to think of you in the dear Old—New Forest.

* * * * *

Now mind you come—if only to see my Nelson (bureau) Relic!! It is such a comfort to me and my papers!

Ever your most loving sister, J.H.E.

TO MRS. ELDER.

X Lines, South Camp. August 7, 1874.

MY DEAR AUNT HORATIA,

I have begged the Tiger Tom for you!

He is the handsomest I ever saw, with such a head! His name is Peter. [Sketch.]

Nothing—I assure you, can exceed his beauty—or the depth of his stripes....

If I had not too many cats already I should have adopted Peter long ago. We always quote William Blake's poem to him when we see him prowling about our garden.

"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, In the forest of the night, What immortal Hand and Eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?"

Do you remember it?

I feel quite a wretch not to like your "Ploughman"[39] as well as usual. There is always poetry in your things, but TO ME the spirit of this one has not quite that reality which is the highest virtue of "a sentiment"—or at least its greatest strength. But I may be wrong. Only that kind of constant lifting of the soul from the labour of daily drudgery to the Father of our spirits seems to me one of the highest, latest, and most refined Christian Graces in natures farthest removed from "the ape and tiger," and most at leisure for contemplative worship. I know there are exceptions. Rural contemplative saints among shepherds and ploughmen. But that the agricultural labourer as a type seeks "Nature's God" at the plough-tail and in the bosom of his family I fear is not the case—and it would be very odd if poverty and ignorance did lead to such results, even in the advantages of an "open-air" life. Perhaps Burns knew such a Cottar on Saturday Nights as he painted—he wasn't sick himself! unless you interpret a neet wi' Burns by that poem!—and there has been one contemplative Shepherd on Salisbury Plain—though the proverb says—

"Salisbury Plain Is seldom without a thief or twain."

—not I believe supposed to refer to highwaymen!! and agricultural labourers stand (among trades) statistically high (or low!) for the crime of murder.

[Footnote 39: Sonnet by H.S. Elder, Aunt Judy's Magazine.]

But I won't inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction in my inside that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned—not the ignorant—who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising sun—though YOUR mind might overflow with awe and admiration. As to the last verse—that a "cot" should ever be "cheerful" which "serves him for" washhouse, kitchen, nursery and all—is a triumph of the "softening influence of use"—and I concede it to you! But where "he reigns as a king his toils forgot" is, I am convinced, at the Black Bull with highly-drugged beer!!!!!!

Now am I not a Brute?

And yet it is very pretty, and—strange to say—the class to whom I believe it would be acceptable, is the class of whom I believe it is not (typically) true, and PERHAPS it is good for every class to have an ideal of its own circumstances before its eyes. But I don't think it is good for rich people's children to grow up with the belief that twelve shillings a week, and cider and a pig, are the wisest and happiest earthly circumstances in which humanity with large families can be placed for their temporal and spiritual progress. I don't think it ever leads to a wish in the young Squire to exchange with Hodge for the good of his own soul, but I think it fosters a fixed conviction that Hodge has nothing to complain of, plus being placed at a particular advantage as to his eternal concerns.

Will you ever forgive me? I like the descriptive parts so much, the "rival cocks at dawn"—the "autumn's mist and spring's soft rain," the team that "turn in their trace in the furrow's face," and the life-like descriptions in verse 4. It is as true to one's observation as it is graceful....

Your loving niece, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

Ecclesfield. May 14, 1876.

[Sketch.] Do you remember Whitley Hall? I used to be so fond of the place when I was a child, and no one lived there but an old woman—old Esther Woodhouse—with a face like an ideal witch—at the lodge. As you know I always hated writing down—but long before I accomplished a tale on paper I wrote a novel in my head to Whitley Hall, and used to walk about in the wood there, by the pond—to think it!

York. February 23, 1879.

... Yesterday was sunny though cold, and I had a delicious drive to Escrick and Naburn. Oh, it does send thrills of delight through me, when the hay-coloured hedge-grass begins to mix itself with green, and the hedges have a very brown-madderish tint in the sun, and all the trunks of all the old trees are far greener than the fields, and the earth is turned over, and the rooks hold Parliaments.

* * * * *

[York.] Easter Day, 1879.

... I went to Church at S. John's, Mr. Wilberforce's Church; I had never been in it. That window with S. Christopher, and those strange representations of the Trinity, and the five Master Yorkes kneeling all in blue on one side, and their four sisters on the other, is very wonderful. One of the most wonderful. How fascinating these dear old churches are! Mr. Wilberforce has a fine voice, a most rich and flexible baritone, and sings ballads with a great deal of taste and expression. I shall for ever love York and its marble-white walls and dear old churches, but "Benedetta sia 'l giorno e 'l mese e 'l anno," when you set your face with your black poodle towards the island called Melita! This north-east wind which still blows cruelly would have made you very ill, I think....

I must tell you of another thing. On Thursday I went to the Blind School to a concert. I went rather against my will, for you know I was sadly impressed before by their very unhealthy and miserable look, but oh, dear, they do sing well! and it was very affecting. One of the Barnbys teaches them. They have a good organ, and one of the blind men played very well. They sang very refinedly. No doubt they are well taught, but no doubt also the sense of hearing is delicate with them....

Frimhurst. April 18, 1879.

I got here safely yesterday, though I had a horrid headache on Wednesday, and expected to arrive here in very bad condition. I felt rather bad yesterday morning, but as I drew near, marvellous to relate, my headache went away! Oh! I thought so much of you, as the misty network of pines against the sky—the stretches of moor—the flashes of the canal—and all the dear familiar Heimath Land came nearer and nearer....

It is still "chill April" even here, but wonderfully different from Yorkshire. Sunshine—and green things so much more forward—and birds singing their very throats out.

"Lion," the mastiff, I am rather frightened of, but he loves me and gives me paws over and over again. He is pawing me now and will interrupt.

April 22.

The weather is intensely cold again, though nothing can make this country quite dreary—but cold it is! Still there are all the dear old features, I did not know the Mitchett side (of the Frimhurst bridge) of the canal; but I have been a good way down getting water-weeds—but of course you know it well. It is curiously like bits of the S. John [New Brunswick] River. One could almost see birch-bark canoes at points.

To-day the Jelfs came. It was an affecting meeting, our first since he was so ill in Cyprus, and he said, "It used to seem so little likely one would ever again see the old faces."... He spoke at once about your calling this country Heimath Land, saying it seemed the very word.

I am going on Thursday to stay with the Jelfs till Monday; I shall be so thankful to get a Sunday in the old Tin Tabernacle.

K Lines, South Camp, Heimath Land. April 25.

It is a sunny sweet day, so that I have been strolling about in the garden without a jacket. It is strangely pleasant being here, the old scenes without, and all Sir Howard Elphinstone's pretty things within. The Jelfs are staying in the Elphinstones' hut. In the matter of pictures I do not always agree with Sir Howard, but his decorative taste is very good, and the things he has picked up in all parts of the world are delightful. "Et ego, etc." We have things and things as it is, and shall pick up more! He is so very ingenious, and has made a dado over the mantelpiece, with a white or coloured border on which he puts pictures and photographs; in the centre is a square of coloured material with other things mounted on it. I foresee making a similar design for our Malta mantelpiece, with a gold Maltese cross in the centre and tiles round illustrating the eight Beatitudes....

I am intensely enjoying this bit here. Yesterday the Jelfs and the boys and I had a long wander by the canal where the larches and the birches are getting their tenderest tints on.... On Thursday evening I went to the Tin Church, with the old bell tankling as I went in, and the mess bugles tootling afar as I came out. Bell the schoolmaster and baritone started as if I were a ghost, and sent me a book for the special hymn. Not a soul in the officers' seats—but a good choir and a very fair congregation of men and barrack families. Said I to myself, "I've been living in wealthy Bowdon and in ecclesiastical York, and not had this. Well done—the Tug of War and the Tin Tabernacle and the Camp! and unpaid soldiers and their sons to sing the Lord's Song in the land of their pilgrimage!"

To-day I went with Mrs. Jelf to a meeting at the Club House about "Coffee Houses." When we got in a "rehearsal" (dramatic) was going on, and the chaff was "Have you come for the rehearsal or the coffee-house?" We "Coffee-housers" adjourned to the Whist Room. Sir Thos. Steele in the chair. I had a long chat with him. He says Music and the Drama have declined dreadfully. The meeting was full of friends. "Mat Irvine" nearly wrung my hand off, and I sat by poor Knollys, who is heart-broken at the death of that dear little soul, Captain Barton. It was a first-rate meeting, mixed military and Aldershot tradesmen—a very "nice feeling" displayed—altogether it was wonderfully pleasant.

Exeter. May 16, 1879.

... The weather alternates here between North-Easters and mugginess, and I have never slept without fires yet. All the same I have had some lovely drives, which you know are so good for me. When Mrs. Fox Strangways couldn't go the Colonel has taken me alone 12 or 14 miles in the dog-cart with a very "free-going" but otherwise prettily-behaved little mare named Daphne. The tumbledown of hills and dales is very pretty here, and the deep red of the earth, and the whitewashed and thatched cottages. Very pretty bits for sketching if it had been sketching-weather....

I hope to get several things done in London. Jean Ingelow has burst out rather about my writings, and wants me to do something "in the style of Madam Liberality," and let her try to get it into Good Words, as she thinks I ought to try for a wider audience. I shall certainly go and see her, and talk over matters.... I was very much pleased Sir Anthony Home had been so much pleased with "Jan." To draw tears from a V.C. and a fine old Scotch medico is very gratifying! Capt. Patten said their own Dr. Craig had also been delighted with it. When "We and the World" is done I mean to rest well on my oars, and then try and aim at something to give me a better footing if I can....

June 14, 1879.

... I am getting as devoted to Browning as you. It is very funny—this sudden and simultaneous light on him!

May 23, 1879.

[Sketch.]

Forty-four of these aquatic plant tubs stand in one part of the back premises of Clyst S. George Rectory, full of truly wondrous varieties. The above is a thing like white tassels and purple-pink buds. Fancy how I revel in them, and in the garden, which holds 1640 species of herbaceous perennials all labelled and indexed!! The old Rector (he is 89) is as hard at it as ever. He is so pleased to be listened to, and it is enormously interesting though somewhat fatiguing, and leaves me no time whatever for anything else! My brain whirls with tiles, mosaics, tesserae, bell-castings, bell-marks, and mottos, electros, squeezes, rubbings, etc., etc. His latest plant fad is Willows and Bamboos, of which he has countless kinds growing and flourishing!!! He is infirm, but it is very grand to see life rich with interests, and with work that will benefit others—so near the grave!

We'd a funny scene this morning when I went over the church with him, and had to write my name in the book.

Very testily—"The date, my dear, put the date!"

"I have put it."

More testily at being in the wrong—"Then put your address, put your address."

I hesitated, and he threw up his hands: "Bless me! you've not got one. It has always puzzled me so what made you take a fancy to a soldier."

He had been very full of all kinds of ancient Church matters—a wonderful bell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in a very remarkable inscription, etc.,—so I seized the pen and wrote—Strada Maria Stella, Malta—and "I du thenk" (as they say here) it will considerably puzzle the old sexton!!!!!

Soon after sunrise on Ascension Day I was woke clear and clean by the bells breaking into song. You know campanology is his great hobby. They rang changes, with long pauses between. Bells often try me very much, at Ecclesfield par exemple, but I really enjoyed these....

May 24, 1879.

... A very pathetic bit of private news of poor little MacDowell. He was sent by the General to tell them to strike the tents, and was urging on the ammunition to the front, and encouraging the bandsmen to carry it, when a Zulu shot him. A good and not painful end—God bless him! The Capt. Jones who told this, said also that one little bugler killed three big Zulus with his side-arms before he fell! Also that a private of the 24th saved Chard's life at Rorke's Drift by pushing his head down, so that a bullet went over it!

Woolwich. Whit Monday, 1879.

* * * * *

Don't think you have all the picturesque beggars to yourself! Out in a street of Woolwich with Mrs. O'Malley the other day I saw this—[Sketch.] The eyes though very clear and intense-looking decided me at once the man was blind, though he had no dog, and was only walking solemnly on, with a carved fiddle of white wood under his arm! I ran back after him, and went close in front of him. He gazed and saw nothing. Then I touched him and said, "Are you blind?" He started and said, "Very nearly." I gave him a penny, for which he thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The handle part (forgive my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North American Indian art, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. This has been a lucky day for me." He was a shipwright—can play the piano, he says—lives in the workhouse in winter and comes out in summer—with the flowers—and his fiddle! I knew you would like me to give something to that povero fratello.

Woolwich. June 6, 1879.

... The painter of the Academy this year is Mrs. Butler!! I do hope some day somewhere you may see The Remnants of an Army and Recruits for the Connaught Rangers. The first is in the Academy Notes, which I send you. The second is at least as fine. [Sketch.] The landscape effect is the opal-like sky and bright light full of moisture after rain—heavy clouds hang above—the mountains are a leaden blue—and the sky of all exquisite pale shades of bright colour. Down the wet moor road comes the group. Two very tall, dark-eyed Connaught "boys"—one with a set face and his hands in his pockets looking straight out of the picture—the other with a yearning of Keltic emotion looking back at the hills as if his heart was breaking. The strapping young sergeant looks very grave; but an "old soldier" behind is lighting his pipe, and a bugler is holding back a dog. One of the best faces is that of the drummer who walks first, and whose 13-year-old face is so furrowed about the brow with oppressive anxiety—very truthful!

The Remnants of an Army is of course overpowering by the mere subject, and it is nobly painted. The man and his horse are wonderful alike. There is nothing to touch these two. But I would like to steal Peter Graham's The Seabirds' Resting-Place. Such penguins sitting on wet rocks with wet Fucus growing on them! Such myriads more in the sea-mist that hides the horizon-line—sitting on distant rocks!—and such green waves—by the light of a sunbeam into one of which you see Laminaria fronds and lumps of Fucus tossing up and down. You feel wet and ozoney to come near it! There are some very fine men's portraits, and Orchardson's Gamblers Hard Hit is the best thing of his, I think, that I know....

... There is a very beautiful old gun in the Arsenal upon a gun-carriage with wheels thus [Sketch], and with bas-reliefs of St. Paul and the Viper. It is needless to say the gun came from the island called Melita! But for cunning workmanship and fine bold designs and delicate execution the Chinese guns are the ones! I am taking rubbings of the patterns for decorative purposes! They were taken in the war.

There is yet one picture I must tell you of—"A Musical Story by Chopin"—the boy playing to a group of lads and a tutor. His utterly absorbed face is admirable. It is a very pretty thing. Not marvellous, but very good.

August 5, 1879.

* * * * *

I must tell you that it is on the cards that Caldecott is going to do a coloured picture for me to write to, for the October No. of A.J.M. (so that it will bind up with the 1879 volume and be the Frontispiece). He is so fragile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do it. D—— and he became great friends in London, and I think now he would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over second-rate "society" work for Graphic, etc., etc., when he has such a genius to interpret humour and pathos for good writers, and no real writing gifts himself. (He has done some things called Flirtation in France, supplying both letter-press and sketches!—that are terrible to any one who has gone heart and soul into his House that Jack built!!!) I've told him frankly if he "draws down to me" in the hopes of making my share easy by making his commonplace, and gives me a "rising young family in sand-boots and frilled trousers with an over-fed mercantile mamma," my "few brains will utterly congeal," but I have made two suggestions to him, so closely on his own lines that if hints help him I think he would find it easy. You know horses are really his specialite. I have asked him to give me a coloured thing and one or two rough sketches, Either

An Old Coaching Day's Idyll or—A Trooper's Tragedy.

The same beginning for either:

Child learning to ride on hobby-horse rocking-horse donkey pony etc. etc.

Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching road (Hog's Back!)—a highwayman—a broken-down postilion—a girl on a pillion, etc., etc.

Or, if military:

A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a bridge.

A Horse and Trooper—Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another man across his saddle.

Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet), but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.

* * * * *

August 9, 1879.

* * * * *

I was reading again at Robert Falconer the other day. What grand bits there are in it? With such bosh close by. So like Ruskin in that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers, false swearers, whoremongers, and "all liars"—I wonder whether these trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!

But oh, that description to the son of what it sounded like when his father played the Flowers of the Forest on his fiddle, isn't to be beaten in any language I believe! All the Scotch lasses after Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the men who lay on Flodden Field!—"Lasses to reap and lasses to bind—Lasses to stook." etc., etc., and "no a word I'll warrant ye, to the orra lad that didna gang wi' the lave"!!!![40] and the lad's outburst in reply, "I'd raither be gratten for nor kissed!"

[Footnote 40: Robert Falconer, chap. xix.]

Poor Z——! They don't teach that at Academies and Staff Colleges, nor in the Penny-a-line of newspaper correspondents and the like—but he should get some woman to soak it into his brains that the men women will love are men who would rather be "gratten for" in honour than be kissed in shame.

* * * * *

Ecclesfield. August 23, 1879.

* * * * *

Talking of drawings, what do you think? Caldecott has done me the most lovely coloured thing to write a short tale to for October A.J.M. It is very good of him. He has simply drawn what I asked, but it is quite lovely!

A village Green, sweet little old Church, and house and oak tree, etc., etc. in distance, a small boy with aureole of fair hair on a red-haired pony, coming full tilt across it blowing a penny trumpet and scattering pretty ladies, geese, cocks and hens from his path. His dog running beside him! You will be delighted!

* * * * *

September 1, 1879.

I have done my little story to Caldecott's picture, and I have a strong notion that it will please you. It is called "Jackanapes."... I shall be so disappointed if you don't like "Jackanapes." But I think it is just what you will like!! I think you will cry over him!

September 19, 1879.

Isn't it a great comfort that I have finished the serial story, and "Jackanapes"?—so that I am now quite free, and never mean to write against time again. I know you never cared for the serial; however, it is done, and tolerably satisfactory I think. "Jackanapes" I do hope you will like, picture and all. C—— sent Mr. Ruskin "Our Field," and I am proud to hear he says it is not a mere story—it's a poem! Great praise from a great man!

October 11, 1879.

* * * * *

I was knocked up yesterday in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin at Herne Hill. I find him far more personally lovable than I had expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm. So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such clear Scotch turquoise eyes.

He had been out to buy buns and grapes for me (!), carrying the buns home himself very carefully that they might not be crushed!! We are so utterly at one on some points: it is very delightful to hear him talk. I mean it is uncommonly pleasant to hear things one has long thought very vehemently, put to one by a Master!! Par exemple. You know my mania about the indecent-cruel element in French art, and how the Frenchiness of Victor Hugo chokes me from appreciating him: just as we were going away yesterday Mr. Ruskin called out, "There is something I MUST show Aunt Judy," and fetched two photos. One, an old court with bits of old gothic tracery mixed in with a modern tumbledown building—peaceful old doorway, wild vine twisting up the lintel, modern shrine, dilapidated waterbutt, sunshine straggling in—as far as the beauty of contrast and suggestiveness and form and (one could fancy) colour could go, perfect as a picture. (R—— didn't say all this, but we agreed as to the obvious beauty, etc.) Then he brought out the other photo, and said, "but the French artist cannot rest with that, it must be heightened and stained with blood," and there was the court (photo from a French picture), with two children lying murdered in the sunshine.

Another point we met on was my desire to write a tale on Commercial Honour. He was delighted, and will I think furnish me with "tips." His father was a merchant of the old school. And then to my delight I found him soldier-mad!! So we got on very affably, and I hope to go and stay there when I go home next summer.

* * * * *

November 7, 1879.

Friends are truly kind. Miss Mundella sent two season tickets for the Monday "Pop." to D—— and me. I managed to go and stay for most of it. Norman Neruda, Piatti, and Janotha—have you heard Janotha play the piano? I think she is very wonderful. It is so absolutely without affectation, and so selfless, and yet such a mastery of the instrument. Her rippling passages are like music writ in water, and she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, and quite young. We sat quite near to Browning, who is a nice-looking old man, delightfully clean. He seemed to delight in Neruda and Piatti, and followed the music with a score of his own.

Ecclesfield. Saturday, January 31, 1880.

How beautiful a day is to-day I cannot tell you! It does refresh me!... Head and spine very shaky this morning so that I could not get warm; but I wrapped in my fur cloak, and went out into the sunshine, up and down, up and down the churchyard flags. A sunny old kirkyard is a nice place, I always think, for aged folk and invalids to creep up and down in, and "Tombstone Morality" isn't half as wearing to the nerves as the problems of life!...

* * * * *

Greno House, Tuesday.

Harry Howard drove me up yesterday. It was just as much as I could bear; but I lay on the sofa till dinner, and went to bed at eight, and though my head kept me awake at first, I did well on the whole. Breakfast in bed, a bigger one than I have eaten for three weeks, and since then I have had an hour's drive. The roughness of the roads is unlucky, but the air divine! Such sweet sunshine, and Greno Wood, with yellow remains of bush and bracken, and heavy mosses on the sandstone walls, and tiny streams trickling through boggy bits of the wood, and coming out over the wall to overflow those picturesque stone troughs which are so oddly numerous, and which I had in my head when I wrote the first part of "Mrs. Overtheway."

* * * * *

January 11, 1880.

* * * * *

Very dear to me are all your "tender and true" regards for the old home—the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted—which is bound up with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!! Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever met has, I think, quite your sympathy with exactly what the external world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind—to now when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable—and other people being destitute of the sixth sense to comprehend it—so that one feels a fool either way)—one rarely finds any one to whom one can comfortably speak of it, and be understanded of them. It is the one of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) see those things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me content in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small sunny nook where we may end our days—so long as there is a bit of yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...

[Grenoside.] February 21, 1880.

* * * * *

I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the Lay of the Last Minstrel. There are lovely bits in it.

Reading away at Mrs. Browning lately has very much confirmed my notion that the fault of her things is lack of condensation. They are almost without exception too long. I doubt if one should ever leave less than fifty per cent. of a situation to one's readers' own imagination, if one aims at the highest class of readers. That swan song to Camoeens from his dying lady would have been very perfect in FIVE verses. As it is, one gets tired even of the exquisite refrain "Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" (an expression he had used about her eyes in a song, and which haunts her).

The other night we had Sergeant Dickinson up. He has lately settled in the village. He was in the Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava (17th Lancers), and also at Alma, Inkerman, and Sebastopol. He has also the Mutiny Medal and Good Conduct and Service one, so he is a good specimen. Curious luck, he never had a scratch (!). Says he has had far "worse wounds" performing in Gyms., as he was a good swordsman, etc. He told us some dear tales of old Sir Colin Campbell. He said his men idolized him, but their wives rather more so, and if any of them failed to send home remittances, the spouses wrote straight off to Sir Colin, who had up "Sandy or Wully" for remonstrance, and stopped his grog "till I hear again from your wife, man."

On one occasion he saw a drummer-boy drunk, and a sergeant near. Sir Colin: "Sergeant, does yon boy belong to your company?"

Sergeant: "He does not, sir."

"Does he draw a rum allowance?"

"He does, sir."

"Well, away to the Captain of his company, and say it's my orders that the oldest soldier in this bairn's company is to draw his rum, till he feels convinced it's for the lad's benefit that he should tak it himsel'—and that'll not be just yet awhile I'm thinking."

Some brilliant tales too of the wit and gallantry of Irish comrades, several of whom wore the kilt. And almost neatest of all, a story of coming across a fellow-villager among the Highlanders:

"But I were fair poozled He came from t' same place as me, and a clever Yorkshireman too, and he were talking as Scotch as any of 'em. So I says, 'Why I'm beat! what are YOU talking Scotch for, and you a Knaresborough man?' 'Whisht! whisht! Dickinson,' he says, 'we mun A' be Scotch in a Scotch regiment—or there's no living.'"...

February 19, 1880.

I have been re-reading the Legend of Montrose and the Heart of Midlothian with such delight, and poems of both the Brownings, and Ruskin, and The Woman in White, and Tom Brown's Schooldays, etc., etc.!!! I have got two volumes of The Modern Painters back with me to go at.

What a treat your letters are! Bits are nearly as good as being there. The sunset you saw with Miss C——, and the shadowy groups of the masquers below in the increasing mists of evening, painted itself as a whole on to my brain—in the way scenes of Walter Scott always did. Like the farewell to the Pretender in Red Gauntlet, and the black feather on the quicksand in The Bride of Lammermuir.

March 1, 1880.

* * * * *

The ball must have been a grand sight, but I think, judging from the list, that your dress as Thomas the Rhymer stands out in marked individuality. Nothing shows more how few people are at all original than the absence of any thing striking or quaint in most of the characters assumed at a Fancy Ball. This, however, is Pampering the Pride of you members of the Mutual Admiration Society. You must not become cliquish—no not Ye Yourselves!!!!

Above all you must never lose that gracious quality (for which I have so often given you a prize) of patience and sympathy with small musicians and jangling pianos in the houses of kind and hospitable Philistines. Besides, I like you to be largely gracious and popular. All the same I confess that it is a grievance that music (and sherry!) are jointly regarded as necessary to be supplied by all hosts and hostesses—whether they can give you them good or not! People do not cram their bad drawings down your throats in similar fashion, Still what is, is—and Man is more than Music—and I have never felt the real mastership you hold in music more than when you have beaten a march out of some old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R—— petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!! I have heard enough good playing to be able to gauge him!...

Incapacity for every other kind of effort is giving me leisure for a feast of reading and re-reading such as I have not indulged for years. Amongst other things I have read for the first time Black's Strange Adventures of a Phaeton—it is very charming indeed, and if you haven't read it, some time you should. As a rule I detest German heroes to English books, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and the refrain outbreaks of his jealousy are really high art, when he unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif—"but that young man of Twickenham—he is a most pitiful fellow—" you feel Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. But Black has very artistically managed his hero's idioms so as to give great effect. And as we have a brain wave on about Womanhood you may like, as much as I have, V. Rosen's sketch of English women (to whom he gives the palm over those of other nations). Speaking of some others—"very nice to look at perhaps, and very charming in their ways perhaps, but not sensible, honest, frank like the English woman, and not familiar with the seriousness of the world, and not ready to see the troubles of other people. But your English-woman who is very frank to be amused, and can enjoy herself when there is a time for that, who is generous in time of trouble and is not afraid, and can be firm and active and yet very gentle, and who does not think always of herself, but is ready to help other people, and can look after a house and manage affairs—that is a better kind of woman I think—more to be trusted—more of a companion—oh, there is no comparison!"

It is very good, isn't it?—and he is mending the fire during this outburst, and keeps piling coal on coal as he warms with his subject.

I must also just throw you two quotations from Macaulay's most interesting Life and Letters. Quotations within quotations, for they are extracts.

"Antoni Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true."

(BROWNING.)

"There is na workeman That can both worken wel and hastilie This must be done at leisure parfaitlie."

(CHAUCER.)

By the bye, the italics in Black's quotations are mine. Good wording I think.

But how one does go back with delight to Scott! I confess I think to have written the Heart of Midlothian is to have put on record the existence of a moral atmosphere in one's own nation as grand as the ozone of mountains. WHAT a contrast to that of French novels (with no disrespect to the brilliant art and refreshing brain quickness of the latter); but Ruskin's appeal to the responsibility of those who wield Arts instead of Trades recurs to one as one under which Scott might have laid his hand upon his breast, and looked upwards with a clear conscience....

March 16, 1880.

* * * * *

I quite agree with you about an artlessness and roughness in Scott's work. I thought what I had dwelt on was the magnificent tone of the H. of Midlothian. Also he has two of the first (first in rank and order if not first in degree) qualifications for a writer of fiction—Dramatism and individuality amongst his characters. He had (rather perhaps one should say), the quality which is nascitur non fit—Imagination. It is the great defect, I think, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious—Imagination limited—Dramatism—nil!

She draws people she has seen (Mrs. Poyser) like a photograph—she imagines a Daniel Deronda, and he is about "as natural as waxworks."

"I've been reading Jean Ingelow's Fated to be Free lately, and it is a marvellous mixture of beauty and failure. But lovely passages. Incisive as G. Eliot, and from the point of view of a tenderer mind and experience. This is beautiful, isn't it?

"Nature before it has been touched by man is almost always beautiful, strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity, and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as well as it did before."

The double edge of the sentiment is very exquisite, and the truth of the natural fact very perfect as observation, and the book is full of such writing. But oh, dear! the confusion of plot is so maddening you have a delirious feeling that everybody is getting engaged to his half-sister or widowed stepmother, and keep turning back to make sure! But the dramatism is very good and leads you on....

March 22, 1880.

... I am getting you a curious little present. It is Thos. A Kempis's De Imitatione Christi in Latin and Arabic. A scarce edition printed in Rome. I think you will like to have it. That old Thomas was much more than a mere monk. A man for all time, his monasticism being but a fringe upon the robe of his wisdom and honest Love of God. It will be curious to see how it lends itself to Arabic. Well, I fancy. Being in very proverbial mould. Such verses as this (I quote roughly from memory):

"That which thou dost not understand when thou readest thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation: for there be secrets of religion which are not known till they be felt and are not felt but in the Day of a great calamity!" (a piece of wisdom with application to other experiences besides religious ones). I think this will read well in the language of the East. As also "In omnibus rebus Respice Finem," etc.....

* * * * *

Tuesday.

I am quite foolishly disappointed. The A Kempis is gone already! It is a new Catalogue, and I fancied it was an out-o'-way chance. It seems Ridler has no other Arabic books whatever. He may not have known its value. It "went" for six shillings!!!

* * * * *

TO THE BISHOP OF FREDERICTON.

131, Finborough Road, South Kensington. March 23, 1880.

MY DEAR LORD,

I thank you with all my heart for the gift of your book,[41] and yet more for the kindly inscription, which affected me much.

[Footnote 41: The Book of Job, translated from the Hebrew Text by John, Bishop of Fredericton.]

As one gets older one feels distance—or whatever parts one from people one cares for—worse and worse, I think!—However, whatever helps to remedy the separation is all the dearer!

I had devoured enough of your notes, to have laughed more than once and almost to have heard you speak, before I moved from the chair in which the book found me, and had read all the Introduction. I could HEAR you say that "Bildad uttered a few trusims in a pompous tone"!

What I have read of your version seems to me grand, bits here and there I certainly had never felt the poetical power of before. Rex will be delighted with it!

I fully receive all you say about Satan and the Sons of God. But I think a certain painfulness about such portions of Holy Writ—does not come from (1) Unwillingness to lay one's hand upon one's mouth and be silent before God. (2) Or difficulty about the Personality of Satan. I fancy it is because in spite of oneself it is painful that one of the rare liftings of the Great Veil between us and the "ways" of the Majesty of God should disclose a scene of such petty features—a sort of wrangling and experimentalizing, that it would be pleasanter to be able to believe was a parable brought home to our vulgar understandings rather than a real vision of the Lord our Strength.

I am, my dear Lord, Your grateful and ever affectionate old friend, J.H.E.

TO J.H.E.

Fredericton. April 8, 1880.

MY DEAR MRS. EWING,

I will not let the mail go out without proving that I am not a bad correspondent, and without thanking you for your delightful letter. Oh! why don't you squeeze yourself sometimes into that funny little house opposite Miss Bailey's, and let me take a cup of tea off the cushions, or some other place where the books would allow it to be put? And why don't you allow me to stumble over my German? And why doesn't Rex, Esq. (for Rex is too familiar even for a Bishop) correct my musical efforts? How terrible this word past is! The past is at all events real, but the future is so shadowy, and like the ghosts of Ulysses it entirely eludes one's grasp. I speak of course of things that belong to this life. It was (I assure you) a treat to lay hold of you and your letters, and (a minor consideration) to find that even your handwriting had not degenerated, and had not become like spiders' legs dipped in ink and crawling on the paper, as is the case of some nameless correspondents. There was only one word I could not make out. In personal appearance the letters stood thus, [Greek: us]. It looks like "us," or like the Greek [Greek: un], which being interpreted is "pig." But M——, who is far cleverer than I am, at once oracularly pronounced it "very," and I believe her and you too....

I was greatly tickled in your getting amusement out of "Job," the last book where one would have expected to find it; but stop—I recollect it is out of me, not the patriarch, that you find something to smile at, and no doubt you are right, for no doubt I say ridiculous things sometimes. Au serieux, it pleases me much that you enter into my little book, and evidently have read it, for I have had complimentary letters from people who plainly had not read a word, and to the best of my belief never will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet one admires his word-painting while one longs to kick him! I am glad to see the Church Times agrees with me in the early character of the book. There is not a trace in it of later Jewish history or feeling. The argument on the other side is derived from Aramaic words only, which words are not unsuitable to a writer who either lived, or had lived out of Palestine, and scholars agree now that they may belong either to a very late or a very early time, and are used by people familiar with the cognate languages of the East.

A word about your very natural feeling on the subject of Satan. I suppose that Inspiration does not interfere with the character of mind belonging to the inspired person. The writer thinks Orientally, within the range of thought common to the age, and patriarchal knowledge, so that he could neither think nor write as S. Paul or S. John, even though inspired. We criticize his writing (when we do criticize it) from the standpoint of the nineteenth century, i.e. from the accumulated knowledge, successive revelations, and refined civilization of several thousand years.

Its extreme simplicity of description may appear to us trivial. But is not the fact indubitable that God tries us as He did Job, though by different methods? And is not our Lord's expression, "whom Satan hath bound, lo! these eighteen years," and S. Paul's, "to deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," analogous to the account in Job? One has only to try to transfer oneself to the patriarchal age, when there was no Bible, no Lord Jesus come in the flesh, but when at intervals divine revelations were given by personal manifestations and then withdrawn, and to take out of oneself all one has known about God from a child, to view the account as an Oriental would look at it, not as a Western Christian. The "experiment" (so to speak) involves one of the grandest questions in the world—Is religion only a refined selfishness, or is there such a thing as real faith and love of God, apart from any temporal reward? The devil asserts the negative and so (observe) do Job's so-called friends; but Job proves the affirmative, and hence amidst certain unadvised expressions he (in the main) speaks of God the thing that is right.

I do not know that there is in the early chapters anything that can be called "petty," more than in the speech of the devils to our Lord, and His suffering them to go into the swine.

We must, however, beware that we do not, when we say "petty," merely mean at bottom what is altogether different from our ordinary notions, formed by daily and general experience of life, as we ourselves find it.

All this long yarn, and not a word about your health, which is shameful. We both do heartily rejoice that you are better, and only hope for everybody's sake and your own, you will nurse and husband your strength....

Your affectionate old friend, JOHN FREDERICTON.

TO A.E.

April 10, 1880.

* * * * *

The night before last I dined with Jean Ingelow. I went in to dinner with Alfred Hunt (a water-colour painter to whose work Ruskin is devoted). A very unaffected, intelligent, agreeable man; we had a very pleasant chat. On my other side sat a dear old Arctic Explorer, old Ray. I fell quite in love with him, and with the nice Scotch accent that overtook him when he got excited. Born and bred in the Orkneys, almost, as he said, in the sea; this wild boyhood of familiarity with winds and waves, and storms and sports, was the beginning of the life of adventure and exploration he has led. He told me some very interesting things about Sir John Franklin. He said that great and good as he was there were qualities which he had not, the lack of which he believed cost him his life. He said Sir John went well and gallantly at his end, if he could keep to the lines he had laid down; but he had not "fertility of resource for the unforeseen," and didn't adapt himself. As an instance, he said, he always made his carriers march along a given line. If stores were at A, and the point to be reached B, by the straight line from A to B he would send the local men he had hired through bog and over boulder, whereas if he said to any of them, "B is the place you must meet me at," with the knowledge of natives and the instinct of savages they would have gone with half the labour and twice the speed. He said too that Franklin's party suffered terribly because none of his officers were sportsmen, which, he said, simply means starvation if your stores fail you. We had a long talk about scientific men and their deductions, and he said quaintly, "Ye see, I've just had a lot of rough expeerience from me childhood; and things have happened now and again that make me not just put implicit faith in all scientific dicta. I must tell you, Mrs. Ewing, that when I was a young man, and just back from America and the Arctic Regions, where I'd lived and hunted from a mere laddie, I went to a lecture delivered by one of the verra first men of the day (whose name for that reason I won't give to ye) before some three thousand listeners and the late Prince Consort; and there on the table was the head and antlers of a male reindeer—beasts that, as I'm telling ye, I knew sentimately, and had killed at all seasons. And this man, who, as I'm telling ye, was one of the verra furrrst men of the day (which is the reason why I'm not giving ye his name) spoke on, good and bad, and then he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, and your Royal Highness, be good enough to look at the head of this Reindeer. Here ye see the antlers,' and so forth, 'and ye'll obsairve that there's a horn that has the shape of a shovel and protrudes over the beast's eyes in a way that must be horribly inconvenient. But when ye see its shape, ye'll perceive one of the most beautiful designs of Providence, a proveesion as we may say; for this inconvenient horn is so shaped that with it the beast can shovel away the deep winter snow and find its accustomed food.'

"And when I heard this I just shook with laughing till a man I knew saw me, and asked what I was laughing at, and I said, 'Because I happen to know that the male reindeer sheds its antlers every year in the beginning of November, snow shovel and all, and does not resume them till spring.'"!!!!!!

* * * * *

April 26, 1880.

* * * * *

Curious your writing to me about Dante's Hell—and Lethe. Two books in my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE as strongly in those who have been carefully brought up apart from "religious convictions" as in those whose minds have been soaked in them). One was Flaxman's Dante, the other Selous's illustrations in the same style to the Pilgrim's Progress. I do not know whether I suffered more in my childhood than other children. Possibly, as my head was a good deal too big for my body! But I remember two troubles that haunted me. One that I should get tired of Eternity. Another that I couldn't be happy in Heaven unless I could forget. And in this latter connection I loved indescribably one of Flaxman's best designs. [Sketch.] I can't remember it well enough to draw decently, but this was the attitude of Dante whom Beatrice was just laving in the Waters of Forgetfulness before they entered Paradise.

And even more fond was I of the passing of the great river by Christiana and her children, and by that mixed company of the brave and the weak, the young and the old, the gentle and the impatient,—and that grand touch by which the "Mr. Ready-to-Halt" of the long Pilgrimage crossed the waters of Death without fear or fainting.

* * * * *

Why should you think I should differ with Dante in his estimate of sin? I doubt if I could rearrange his Circles, except that "Lust" is a wide word, as = Passion I should probably leave it where it is; but there are hideous forms of it which are inextricably mingled, if not identical with Cruelty,—and Cruelty I should put at the lowest round of all.

Clyst S. George. April 30, 1880.

* * * * *

We have had rather a chaff with Mr. Ellacombe (who in his ninety-first year is as keen a gardener as ever!) because he has many strange sorts of Fritillary, and when I told him I had seen and gone wild over a sole-coloured pale yellow one which I saw exhibited in the Horticultural Gardens, he simply put me down—"No, my dear, there's no such thing; there's a white Fritillary I can show you outside, and there's Fritillaria Lutea which is yellow and spotted, but there's no such plant as you describe." Still it evidently made him restless, and he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him shaves about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to describe a white Crown Imperial—a thing that has never been!" Later he announced—"I have written to Barr and Sugden—'Gentlemen! Here's another White Elephant. A lady has seen a sole-coloured Yellow Fritillary!'"

This morning B. and S. wrote back, and are obliged to confess that "a yellow Fritillary has been produced," but (not being the producers) they add, "It is not a good yellow." Pour moi, I take leave to judge of colours as well as Barr and Sugden, and can assure you it is a very lovely yellow, pale and chrome-y. It has been like a chapter out of Alphonse Karr!

One of the horticultural papers is just about to publish Mr. Ellacombe's old list of the things he has grown in his own garden. Three thousand species!

* * * * *

I hope you liked that Daily Telegraph article on the Back Gardener I sent you? It is really fine workmanship in the writing line as well as being amusing. I abuse the Press often enough, but I will say such Essays (for they well deserve the name) are a great credit to the age—in Penny Dailies!!!

"The Nursery Nonsense of the Birds," "A Stratified Chronology of Occupancies," "Waves of Whims," etc., etc., are the work of a man who can use his tools with a master's hand, or at least a skilled worker's!

I am reading another French novel, by Daudet, Jack. So far (as I have got) it is marvellous writing. "Le petit Roi—Dahomey" in the school "des pays chauds" is a Dickenesque character, but quite marvellous—his fate—his "gri-gri"—his final Departure to the land where all things are so "made new" that "the former" do not "come into mind"—having in that supreme hour forgotten alike his sufferings, his tormentors, and his friends—and only babbling in Dahomeian in that last dream in which his spirit returned to its first earthly home before "going home" for Good!—is superb!!! The possible meanness and brutality of civilized man in Paris—the possible grandeur and obvious immortality of the smallest, youngest, "gri-gri" worshipping nigger of Dahomey oh it is wonderful altogether, and I should fancy SUCH a sketch of the incompris poet and the rest of the clique!! "C'est LUI."

* * * * *

Ecclesfield, Sheffield. July 23, 1880.

MY DEAR MR. CALDECOTT,

I am sending you a number of "Jackanapes" in case you have lost your other.

I have made marks against places from some of which I think you could select easy scenes; I mean easy in the sense of being on the lines where your genius has so often worked.

I will put some notes about each at the end of my letter. What I now want to ask you is whether you could do me a few illustrations of the vignette kind for "Jackanapes," so that it might come out at Christmas. Christmas ought to mean October! so it would of course be very delightful if you could have completed them in September—and as soon as might be. But do not WORRY your brain about dates. I would rather give it up than let you feel the fetters of Time, which, when they drag one at one's work, makes the labour double. But if you will begin them, and see if they come pretty readily to your fingers, I shall only too well understand it if after all you can't finish in time for this season!

In short I won't press you for all my wishes!—but I do feel rather disposed to struggle for a good place amongst the hosts of authors who are besetting you; and as I am not physically or mentally well constituted for surviving amongst the fittest, if there is much shoving (!) I want to place my plea on record.

So will you try?—

* * * * *

It was very kind of you and your wife to have us to see your sketches. I hope you are taking in ozone in the country.

Yours ever, J.H.E.

[NOTES.]

Respectfully suggested scenes to choose from.

Initial T out of the old tree on the green, with perhaps to secure portrait the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag a la an old Chelsea Pensioner.

1. A lad carrying his own long-bow (by regulation his own height) and trudging by his pack-horse's side, the horse laden with arrows for Flodden Field (September 9, 1513). Small figures back view (!) going westwards—poetic bit of moorland and sky.

2. If you like—a portrait of the little Miss Jessamine in Church.

3 to 5. You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type). Old inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ones) scattered in the fray.

The Black Captain, with his hand on his horse's mane, bigger—(so as to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or small on his horse stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused behind Master Johnson (page 707).

6. Pretty vignetted portrait of the little Miss J., three-quarter length, about size of page 29 of Old Christmas. Scene, girl's bedroom—she with her back to mirror, face buried in her hands, "crying for the Black Captain"; her hair down to just short of her knees, the back of her hair catching light from window and reflected in the glass. Old Miss Jessamine (portrait) talking to her "like a Dutch uncle" about the letter on the dressing-table; aristocratic outline against window, and (as Queen Anne died) "with one finger up"!!!!! (These portraits would make No. 2 needless probably.)

7. Not worth while. I had thought of a very small quay scene with slaves, a "black ivory"—and a Quaker's back! (Did you ever read the correspondence between Charles Napier and Mr. Gurney on Trade and War?)

8. A very pretty elopement please! Finger-post pointing to Scotland—Captain not in uniform of course.

9 or 10—hardly; too close to the elopement which we must have!

11. You are sure to make that pretty.

12. Might be a very small shallow vignette of the field of Waterloo. I will look up the hours, etc., and send you word.

13. As you please—or any part of this chapter.

16. I mean a tombstone like this [Sketch of flat-topped tombstone], very common with us.

17, 18. I leave to you.

19 or 20, might suit you.

21. Please let me try and get you a photo of a handsome old general!! I think I will try for General MacMurdo, an old Indian hero of the most slashing description and great good looks.

22. I thought some comic scene of a gentleman in feather-bed and nightcap with a paper—"Rumours of Invasion" conspicuous—might be vignetted into a corner.

23 might be fine, and go down side of page; quite alone as vignette, or distant indication of Jackanapes looking after or up at him.

24. Should you require military information for any scene here?

25-26. I hope you could see your way to 26. Back view of horses—"Lollo the 2nd" and a screw, Tony lying over his holding on by the neck and trying to get at his own reins from Jackanapes' hand. J.'s head turned to him in full glow of the sunset against which they ride; distant line of dust and "retreat" and curls of smoke.

The next chapter requires perhaps a good deal of "war material" to paint with, and strictly soldier-type faces.

27. The cobbler giving his views might be a good study with an advertisement somewhere of the old "souled and healed cheap."

28. This scene I think you might like, and please on the wall have a hatchment with "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (excuse my bad Latinity if I have misquoted).

29 would make a pretty scene, I think, and

30 would make me too happy if you scattered pretty groups and back views of the young people, "the Major" and one together, in one of your perfect bits of rural English summer-time.

If there were to be a small vignette at the end, I should like a wayside Calvary with a shadowy Knight in armour, lance in rest, approaching it from along a long flat road.

Now please (it is nearly post time!) forgive how very badly I have written these probably confusing suggestions. I am not very well, and my head and thumb both fail me.

If you can do it, do it as you like. I will send you a photo of an officer who will do for the Black Captain, and will try and secure a General also. If you could lay your hands on the Illustrated Number that was "extra" for the death of the Prince Imperial—a R.A. officer close by the church door, helping in one end of the coffin, is a very typical military face.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

July 30, 1880.

* * * * *

Oh, with what sympathy I hear you talk of Shakespeare. Nay! not Dante and not Homer—not Chaucer—and not Goethe—"not Lancelot nor another" are really his peers.

Here blossom sonnets that one puts on a par with his—there, in another man's work the illimitable panorama of varied and life-like men and women "merely players," may draw laughter and tears (Crabbe, and much of Dickens and other men, and Don Quixote). His coarse wit and satire and shrewdness, when he is least pure, may I suppose find rivals in some of the eighteenth or seventeenth century English writers, and in the marvellous brilliancy of French ones. When he is purest and highest I cannot think of a Love Poet to touch him. Tennyson perhaps nearest. But he seems quite unable to fathom the heart of a noble woman with any strength of her own, or any knowledge of the world. "Enid" is to me intolerable as well as the degraded legend it was founded on. Perhaps the brief thing of Lady Godiva is the nearest approach, and Elaine faultless as the picture of a maiden-heart brought up in "the innocence of ignorance." But he can write fairly of "fair women." Scott runs closer, but his are paintings from without. "Jeanie Deans" is bad to beat!!

Shelley comes to his side when weirdness is concerned.

"Five fathom deep thy father lies," etc.,

is run hard by—

"Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high: Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come."

But I will not bore you with comparisons. My upshot is that no one of the many who may rival him in SOME of his perfections, COMBINE them all in ONE genius. In all these philosophizing days—who touches him in philosophy? From the simplest griefs and pleasures and humanity at its simplest—Macduff over the massacre of his wife and children—to all that the most delicate brain may search into and suffer, as Hamlet—or the ten thousand exquisite womanish thoughts of Portia, a creature of brain power and feminine fragility—

"By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great world."

* * * * *

TO C.T.G.

Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield. Aug. 3, 1880.

* * * * *

A propos of my affairs ... next year we might do something with some of my "small gems." Don't you like "Aldegunda" (Blind Man and Talking Dog)? D. does so much. Do you like the "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher," "Ladders to Heaven," and "Dandelion Clocks"?...

... As you know, these little things are the chief favourites with my more educated friends, whose kindness consoles me for the much labour I spend on so few words (The "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher" was "in hand" two years!!!), and I think their only chance would be to be so dressed and presented as to specially and downrightly appeal to those who would value the Art of the Illustrator, and perhaps recognize the refinement of labour with which the letter-press has been ground down, and clipped, and condensed, and selected—till, as it would appear to the larger buying-public, there is wonderfully little left you for your money!!...

Poor old Cruikshank! How well—and willingly—he would have done "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher." He said, when he read my things, "the Fairies came and danced to him"—which pleased me much.

* * * * *

Yesterday I pulled myself together and wrote straight to the printers, to the effect that the suffering the erratic and careless printing of "We and the World" cost me was such that I was obliged to protest against X. and Sons economizing by using boys and untrained incapables to print (printing from print being easier, and therefore adapted for teaching the young P.D. how to set up type), pointing out one sentence in which (clear type in A.J.M.) the words "insist on guiding my fate by lines of their own ruling" was printed to the effect that they wouldn't insist on gilding my faith, etc., their being changed to there. All of which the reader had overlooked—to concern himself with my Irish brogue—and certain reiterations of words which he mortally hates, and which I regard the chastened use of, as like that of the plural of excellence in Hebrew!

(He would have put that demoniacal mark [symbol: checkmark] against one of the summers in "All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone"!!!)

I sent SUCH a polite message PER X. to his reader, thanking him much for trying to mend my brogue (which had already passed through the hands of three or four Irishmen, including Dr. Todhunter and Dr. Littledale), but proposing that for the future we should confine ourselves to our respective trades,—That the printer should print from copy, and not out of his own head—that the reader should read for clerical errors and bad printing, which would leave me some remnant of time and strength to attend to the language and sentiments for which I alone was responsible. My dear love, I must stop.

Ever your devoted, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

Farnham Castle, Surrey. Oct. 10, 1880.

DIARY OF MRS. PEPYS.

"Oct. 9.—Passed an ill night, and did early resolve to send a carrier pigeon unto the Castle to notify that I must lie where I was, being unable to set forward. But on rising I found myself not so ill that I need put others to inconvenience; so I did but order a cab and set forth at three in the afternoon, in pouring rain. My hostess sent with me David her footman, who saved me all trouble with my luggage, and so forth from Frimley to Farnham. A pause at the South Camp Station, dear familiar spot, a little before which the hut where my good lord lay before we were married loomed somewhat drearily through the mist and rain. At Farnham the Lord Bishop's servitor was waiting for me, and took all my things, leading me to a comfortable carriage and so forth to the Castle.

Somewhat affrighted at the hill, which is steep, and turns suddenly; but recovered my steadfastness in thinking that no horses could know the way so well as these.

The Bishopess and her daughter received me on the stair-case, and we had tea in the book-gallery, a most pleasing apartment.

Thence to my room to rest till dinner. It is a mighty fine apartment, vast and high, with long windows having deep embrasures, and looking down upon the cedars and away over the whole town, which is a pretty one.

Methinks if I were a state prisoner, I would fain be imprisoned in an upper chamber, looking level with these same cedar-branches, whereon, mayhap, some bird might build its nest for mine entertainment.

Dinner at 8.15. Wore my ancient brocade newly furbished with olive-green satin, and tinted lace about my neck, fastened with a brooch made like to a Maltese Cross, green stockings and shoes embroidered with flowers.

Was taken down to dinner by Sir Thos. Gore Browne, an exceeding pleasant old soldier, elder brother to the Bishop,—having before dinner had much talk with his Lordship, whom I had not remembered to have been the dear friend of our dear friend the Lord Bishop of Fredericton, when both prelates were curates in Exeter."

* * * * *

I am very much enjoying my visit to this dear old Castle. They are superabundantly kind! After the evening yesterday everybody, visitors and family, all trooped into the dimly-lighted chapel for Evening Prayer. They sang "Jerusalem the Golden," and Gen. Lysons sang away through his glass, in his K.C.B. star, and came up to compliment me about it afterwards....

October 22, 1880.

Yesterday was Trafalgar Day. About half-a-dozen old Admirals of ninety and upwards met and dined together! I don't know what I would not have given to have been present at that most ghostly banquet! How like a dream, a shadow, a bubble, a passing vapour, and all the rest of it, must life not have seemed to these ex-midshipmen of the Victory and the Temeraire! muffling their poor old throats against this sudden frost, and toddling to table, and hobnobbing their glass in old-fashioned ways to immortal memories,

"here in London's central roar, Where the sound of those, he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones for Evermore!"

The cold is sudden and most severe. I fear it will hustle some of those dear old Admirals to rejoin their ancient comrade—the "Saviour of the silver-coasted isle."

* * * * *

May 1881.

"The Harbour Bay was clear as glass— So smooth—ly was it strewn! And on—the Bay—the moonlight lay And—the—Shad—ow of—the Moon!"

—thus was it at 11 p.m. on the night of the 4th of May, when I looked out of my bedroom window at Place Castle, Fowey, on the coast of Cornwall!!!!—(and we must also remember that Isolde was married to the King of Cornwall, and lived probably in much such a place as Place!)

* * * * *

I caught a train on to Fowey, which I reached about 5. There I found a brougham and two fiery chestnuts waiting for me, and after some plunging at the train away went my steeds, and we turned almost at once into the drive. There is no park to Place that I could see, but the drive is sui generis! You keep going through cuttings in the rock, so that it has an odd feeling of a drive on the stage in a Fairy Pantomime. On your right hand the cliff is tapestried, almost hidden, by wild-flowers and ferns in the wealthiest profusion! Unluckily the wild garlic smells dreadfully, but its exquisite white blossoms have a most aerial effect, with pink campion, Herb Robert, etc., etc. On the left hand you have perpetual glimpses of the harbour as it lies below—oh, such a green! I never saw such before—"as green as em-er-ald!"—and the roofs of the ancient borough of Fowey!—I hope by next mail to have photographs to send you of the place. It perpetually reminded me of the Ancient Mariner. As to Place (P. Castle they call it now), the photographs will really give you a better idea of it than I can. You must bear in mind that the harbour of Fowey and a castle, carrying artillery, have been in the hands of the Treffrys from time immemorial.... We went over the Church, a fine old Church with a grand tower, standing just below the Castle. The Castle itself is chiefly Henry VI, and Henry VII. I never saw such elaborate stone carving as decorates the outside. There are beautiful "Rose" windows close to the ground, and the Lilies of France, of course, are everywhere. The chief drawing-room is a charming room, hung with pale yellow satin damask, and with beautiful Louis Quinze furniture. The porphyry hall is considered one of the sights, the roof, walls, and floor are all of red Cornish porphyry....

Frimhurst, May 10, 1881.

I have been into the poor old Camp. I will tell thee. Did you ever meet Mr. F., R.E.? a young engineer of H.'s standing, and his chief friend. A Lav-engro (Russian is his present study) with a nice taste in old brass pots and Eastern rugs, and a choice little book-case, and a terrier named "Jem "—the exact image of dear old "Rough." He asked us to go to tea to see the pictures you and I gave to the Mess and so forth. So the General let us have the carriage and pair and away we went. It is the divinest air! It was like passing quickly through BALM of body and mind. And you know how the birds sing, and how the young trees look among the pines, and the milkmaids in the meadows, and the kingcups in the ditches, and then the North Camp and the dust, and Sir Evelyn Wood's old quarters with a new gate, and then the racecourse with polo going on and more dust!—and then the R.E. theatre (where nobody has now the spirit to get up any theatricals!), and the "Kennel" (as Jane Turton called it) where I used to get flags and rushes, and where Trouve, dear Trouve! will never swim again! And then the Iron Church from which I used to run backwards and forwards not to be late for dinner every evening, with the "tin" roof that used to shake to the "Tug of War Hymn,"—and then more dust, and (it must be confessed) dirt and squalor, and back views of ashpit and mess-kitchens and wash-houses, and turf wall the grass won't grow on, and rustic work always breaking up! and so on into the R.E. Lines! Mr. F. was not quite ready for us, so we drove on a little and looked at No. 3. N. Lines. T.'s hut is nearly buried in creepers now. An Isle of Man(do you remember?) official lives there, they say; but it looked as if only the Sleeping Beauty could. Our hut looks just the same. Cole's greenhouse in good repair. But through all the glamour of love one could see that there is a good deal of dirt and dust, and refuse and coal-boxes!!!

Then a bugle played!—

"The trumpet blew!"

I think it was "Oh come to the Orderly Room!" We went to the Mess. The Dining-Room is much improved by a big window, high pitched, opposite the conservatory. It is new papered, prettily, and our pictures hang on each side of the fireplace. Mr. G. joined us and we went into the Ante-Room. Then to the inevitable photo books, in the window where poor old Y. used to sit in his spotless mufti. When G. (who is not spirituel) said, turning over leaves for the young ladies, "that and that are killed" I turned so sick! Mac G. and Mac D.! Oh dear! There be many ghosts in "old familiar places." But I have no devouter superstition than that the souls of women who die in childbed and men who fall in battle go straight to Paradise!!! Requiescant in Pace.

Then to tea in Mr. F.'s quarters next to the men. Then—now mark you, how the fates managed so happy a coincidence—G. said casually, "I saw Mrs. Jelf in the Lines just now!" I nearly jumped out of my boots, for I did not know she had got to England. Then F. had helped to nurse Jelf in Cyprus and was of course interested to see her, so out went G. for Mrs. J., and anon, through the hut porch in she came—Tableau—!

Then I sent the girls with Messrs F. and G. to "go round the stables," and M. and Jem and I remained together. Jem went to sleep (with one eye open) under the table, and the sun shone and made the roof very hot, and outside—"The trumpets blew!"

It was an afternoon wonderfully like a Wagner opera, thickset with recurring motifs....

Frimhurst. June 15, 1891.

* * * * *

The old editions of Dickens are here, and I have been re-reading Little Dorrit with keen enjoyment. There is a great deal of poor stuff in it, but there is more that is first-rate than I thought. I had quite forgotten Flora's enumeration of the number of times Mr. F. proposed to her—"seven times, once in a hackney coach, once in a boat, once in a pew, once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells, and the rest on his knees." But she is very admirable throughout.

I've also been reading some more of that American novelist's work, Henry James, junior,—The Madonna of the Future, etc. He is not great, but very clever.

Used you not to like the first-class Americans you met in China very much? It is with great reluctance—believing Great Britons to be the salt of the earth!!—but a lot of evidence of sorts is gradually drawing me towards a notion that the best type of American Gentleman is something like a generation ahead of our gentlemen in his attitude towards women and all that concerns them. There are certain points of view commonly taken up by Englishmen, even superior ones, which always exasperate women, and which seem equally incomprehensible by American men. You will guess the sort of things I mean. I do not know whether it is more really than the elite of Yankees (in which case we also have our ames d'elite in chivalry)—but I fancy as a race they seem to be shaking off the ground-work idea of woman as the lawful PREY of man, who must keep Mrs. Grundy at her elbow, and show cause why she shouldn't be insulted. (An almost exclusively English feeling even in Great Britain, I fancy. By the bye, what odd flash of self-knowledge of John Bull made Byron say in his will that his daughter was not to marry an Englishman, as either Scotch or Irishmen made better husbands?)...

July 6, 1881.

* * * * *

The Academy this year is very fine. Some truly beautiful things. But before one picture I stood and simply laughed and shook with laughing aloud. It is by an Italian, and called "A frightful state of things." It is a baby left in a high chair in a sort of Highland cottage, with his plate of "parritch" on his lap—and every beastie about the place, geese, cocks, hens, chicks, dogs, cats, etc., etc., have invaded him, and are trying to get some of his food. The painting is exquisite, and it is the most indescribably funny thing you can picture: and so like dear Hector, with one paw on little Mistress's eye eating her breakfast!!!...

* * * * *

Ecclesfield. August 24, 1881.

... Andre has made the "rough-book" (water colours) of "A week spent in a Glass Pond, By the Great Water Beetle." I only had it a few hours, but I scrambled a bit of the title-page on to the enclosed sheet of green paper for you to see. It is entirely in colours. The name of the tale is beautifully done in letters, the initials of which bud and blossom into the Frogbit (which shines in white masses on the Aldershot Canal!) [Sketch.] To the left the "Water Soldier" (Stratiotes Aloides) with its white blossoms. At the foot of the page "the Great Water Beetle" himself, writing his name in the book—Dyticus Marginalis. There is another blank page at the beginning of the book, where the beetle is standing blacking himself in a penny ink-pot!!!! and another where he is just turning the leaves of a book with his antennae—the book containing the name of the chromolithographers. He has adopted almost all my ideas, and I told him (though it is not in the tale) "I should like a dog to be with the children in all the pictures, and a cat to be with the old naturalist,"—and he has such a dog (a white bull terrier) [sketch], who waits on the woodland path for them in one picture, noofles in the colander at the water-beasts in another, examines the beetle in a third, stands on his hind legs to peep into the aquarium in a fourth, etc. But I cannot describe it all to you. I have asked to have it again by and by, and will send you a coloured sketch or two from it. I am so much pleased!... Perhaps the best part of the book is the cover. It is very beautiful. The Bell Glass Aquarium (lights in the water beautifully done) carries the title, and reeds, flowers, newts, beetles, dragon-flies, etc., etc., are grouped with wondrous fancy! This entirely his own design....

Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne. August 30, 1881.

* * * * *

The four Jones children and their nurse are in lodgings at a place called Whitley on the coast, not far from here. Somebody from here goes to see them most days. To-day Mrs. J. and I went. As we were starting dear "Bob" (the collie who used to belong to the Younghusbands) was determined to go. Mrs. Jones said No. He bolted into the cab and crouched among my petticoats; I begged for him, and he was allowed. At the station he was in such haste he would jump into a 2nd class carriage, and we had hard work to get him out. (This is rather funny, because she usually goes there 2nd class with the children: and he looked at the 1st and would hardly be persuaded to get in.) Well, the coast is rather like Filey, and such a wind was blowing, and such white horses foamed and fretted, and sent up wildly tossed fountains of foam against the rocks, and such grey and white waves swallowed up the sands! I ran and played with the children and the dog—and built a big sand castle ("Early English if not Delia Cruscan"!!), and by good-luck and much sharp hunting among the storm-wrack flung ashore among the foam, found four cork floats, and made the children four ships with paper sails, and had a glorious dose of oxygen and iodine. How strange are the properties of the invisible air! The air from an open window at Ecclesfield gives me neuralgia, and doubly so at Exeter. To-day the wild wind was driving huge tracts of foam across the sands in masses that broke up as they flew, and driving the sand itself after them like a dust-storm. I could barely stand on the slippery rocks, and yet my teeth seemed to settle in my jaws and my face to get PICKLED (!) and comforted by the wild (and very cold) blast.... Now to sweet repose, but I was obliged to tell you I had been within sound of the sea, aye! and run into and away from the waves, with children and a dog. This is better than a Bath Chair in Brompton Cemetery!...

Thornliebank, Glasgow. September 8, 1881.

... "It is good to be sib to" kindly Scots! and I am having a very pleasant visit. You know the place and its luxuries and hospitalities well.

I came from Newcastle last Friday, and (in a good hour, etc.) bore more in the travelling way than I have managed with impunity since I broke down. I came by the late express, got to Glasgow between 8 and 9 p.m., and had rather a hustle to to get a cab, etc. A nice old porter (as dirty and hairy as a Simian!) secured one at last with a cabby who jabbered in a tongue that at last I utterly lost the running of, and when he suddenly (and as it appeared indignantly!) remounted his box, whipped up, and drove off, leaving me and my boxes, I felt inclined to cry(!), and said piteously to the porter, "What does he say? I cannot understand him!" On which the old Ourang-Outang began to pat me on the shoulder with his paw, and explain loudly and slowly to my Sassenach ears, "He's jest telling ye—that 't'll be the better forrr ye—y'unnerstan'—to hev a caaaab that's got an i(ro)n railing on the top of it—for the sake of yourrr boxes." And in due time I was handed over to a cab with an iron railing, the Simian left me, and so friendly a young cabby (also dirty) took me in hand that I began to think he was drunk, but soon found that he was only exceedingly kind and lengthily conversational! When he had settled the boxes, put on his coat, argued out the Crums' family and their residences, first with me and then with his friends on the platform, we were just off when a thought seemed to strike him, and back he came to the open window, and saying "Ye'll be the better of havin' this ap"—scratched it up from the outside with nails like Nebuchadnezzar's. Whether my face looked as if I did not like it or what, I don't know, but down came the window again with a rattle, and he wagged the leather strap almost in my face and said, "there's hoals in't, an' ye can jest let it down to yer own satisfaction if ye fin' it gets clos." Then he rattled it up again, mounted the box, and off we went. Oh, such a jolting drive of six miles! Such wrenching over tramway lines! But I had my fine air-cushions, and my spine must simply be another thing to what it was six months back. Oh, he was funny! I found that he did NOT know the way to Thornliebank, but having a general idea, and a (no doubt just) faith in his own powers, he swore he did know, and utterly resented asking bystanders. After we got far away from houses, on the bleak roads in the dark night, I merely felt one must take what came. By and by he turned round and began to retrace his steps. I put out my head (as I did at intervals to his great disgust; he always pitched well into me—"We're aal right—just com—pose yeself," etc.), but he assured me he'd only just gone by the gate. So by and by we drew up, no lights in the lodge, no answer to shouts—then he got down, and in the darkness I heard the gates grating as if they had not been opened for a century. Then under overhanging trees, and at last in the dim light I saw that the walls were broken down and weeds were thick round our wheels. I could bear it no longer, and put out my head again, and I shall never forget the sight. The moon was coming a little bit from behind the clouds, and showed a court-yard in which we had pulled up, surrounded with buildings in ruins, and overgrown with nettles and rank grass. We had not seen a human being since we left Glasgow, at least an hour before,—and of all the places to have one's throat cut in!! The situation was so tight a place, it really gave one the courage of desperation, and I ordered him to drive away at once. I believe he was half frightened himself, and the horse ditto, and never, never was I in anything so nearly turned over as that cab! for the horse got it up a bank. At last it was righted, but not an inch would my Scotchman budge till he'd put himself through the window and confounded himself in apologies, and in explanations calculated to convince me that, in spite of appearances, he knew the way to Thornliebank "pairfeckly well." "Noo, I do beg of ye not to be narrrr-vous. Do NOT give way to't. Ye may trust me entirely. Don't be discommodded in the least. I'm just pairfectly acquainted with the road. But it'll be havin' been there in the winter that's just misled me. But we're aal right." And all right he did eventually land me here! so late J. had nearly given me up.

* * * * *

TO MRS. ELDER.

Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield. October 26, 1881.

DEAREST AUNT HORATIA,

* * * * *

D. says you would like some of the excellent Scotch stories I heard from Mr. Donald Campbell. I wish I could take the wings of a swallow and tell you them. You must supply gaps from your imagination.

They were as odd a lot of tales as I ever heard—drawled (oh so admirably drawled, without the flutter of an eyelid, or the quiver of a muscle) by a Lowland Scotchman, and queerly characteristic of the Lowland Scotch race!!!! Picture this slow phlegmatic rendering to your "mind's eye, Horatia!"