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read of mornings; the same old books over and over again, having no command of new ones walk with my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows, up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such verdure! white clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very charming_book) has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who was of the old classical taste asked him if he did not find it difficult to place his brown tree in his pictures, "Not at all," said C., "I never put one in at all." And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters' landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried at and perhaps the old masters chose a soberer scale of things as more within the compass of lead paint. To paint dew with lead!

I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and delight in the Allegro and Penseroso, full of pomp and fancy. What a pity Handel could not have written music to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton would have written, if they had known of such a musician to write for.

TO FREDERIC TENNYSON BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, Oct. 10, '44. My dear Frederic,

You will think I have wholly cut you. But I wrote half a letter to you three months ago; and mislaid it; spent some time in looking for it, always hoping; and then some more time despairing; and we all know how time goes when we have got a thing to do which we are rather lazy about doing. As for instance, getting up in a morning. Not that writing a letter to you is so bad as getting up; but it is not easy for mortal man who has heard, seen, done, and thought, nothing since he last wrote, to fill one of these big foreign sheets full as a foreign letter ought to be. I am now returned to my dull home here after my usual pottering about in the midland counties of England. A little Bedfordshire a little Northamptonshire a little more folding of the hands the same faces same thoughts turns of road

the same fields the occurring at the same this is all I have to tell

of; nothing at all added — but the summer gone. My garden is covered with yellow and brown leaves; and a man is digging up the garden beds before my window, and will plant some roots and bulbs for next year. My parsons come and smoke with me &c. "The round of life from hour to hour" alluding doubtless to a mill-horse. Alfred is reported to be still at Park House, where he has been sojourning for two months, I think; but he never writes me a word. Hydropathy has done its worst; he writes the names of his friends in water.

I spent two days in London with old Morton about five weeks ago; and pleasant days they were. The rogue bewitches me with his wit and honest speech. He also stayed some while at Park House, while Alfred was there, and managed of course to frighten the party occasionally with some of his sallies. He often writes to me; and very good his letters are all of them.

When do you mean to write me another? Morton told me in his last that

he had heard from Brotherton you were gone, or going, to Naples. I dare say this sheet of mine will never get to your hands. But if it does, let me hear from you. Is Italy becoming stale to you? Are you going to Cairo for fresh sensations? Thackeray went off in a steamboat about the time the French were before Mogadore; he was to see those coasts and to visit Jerusalem! Titmarsh at Jerusalem will certainly be an era in Christianity. But I suppose he will soon be back now. Spedding is yet in his highlands, I believe, considering Grouse and Bacon.

I expect to run up to London some time during the winter, just to tell over old friends' faces and get a sup of music and painting. I have bought very few more pictures lately; and heard no music but Mendelssohn's M. Night's Dream. The overture, which was published long ago, is the best part; but there is a very noble triumphal march also.

Now I feel just in the same fix as I did in that sheet of paper whose fate is uncertain. But if I don't put in a word more, yet this shall go, I am determined. Only consider how it is a matter of necessity that I should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most unbounded applause by Miss Rainforth,

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble Halls,"

which is sung and organed at every corner in London. I think you may imagine what kind of flowing time of the last degree of imbecility it is. The words. are written by Mr. Bunn! Arcades ambo.

I say we shall see you over in England before long: for I rather think you want an Englishman to quarrel with sometimes. I mean quarrel in the sense of a good strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side by occasional outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try. You used to irritate my vegetable blood sometimes,

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Should I not have answered you ere this 6th of November? surely: what excuse? none that I know of: except indeed, that perhaps your very generosity and boundlessness of approval made me in a measure shamefaced. I could scarcely accept it, being, I fancy, a modest man, and always more or less doubtful of my own efforts in any line. But I may tell you that your little note gave me more pleasure than all the journals and monthlies and quarterlies which have come across me: not so much from your being the Great Novelist, I hope, as from your being my good old friend, or perhaps from your being both of these in one. Well, let it be. I have been ransacking all sorts of old albums and scrap books but cannot find anything worthy sending you. Unfortunately before your letter arrived I had agreed to give Macmillan the only available poem I had by me ("Sea Dreams"). I don't think he would have got it (for I dislike publishing in magazines) except that he had come to visit me in my Island, and was sitting and blowing his weed vis-à-vis. I am sorry that you have engaged for any quantity of money to let your brains be sucked periodically by Smith, Elder & Co.: not that I don't like Smith, who seems from the very little I have seen of him, liberal and kindly, but that so great an artist as you are should go to work after this fashion. Whenever you feel your brains as the "remainder biscuit," or indeed whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on these downs where the air, as Keats said, is "worth sixpence a pint," and bring your girls too,

Yours always,

A. TENNYSON.

ROBERT BROWNING

TO MISS HAWORTH
FLORENCE, July 20, 1861.

My dear Friend,

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I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you something perhaps and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to had no presentiment of the result whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was "better," "quite comfortable if I would but come to bed," to within a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week's illness - but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear she said on the last evening "it is merely the old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago there is no doubt I shall soon recover," and we talked over plans for the summer, and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed so little reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily, and brokenly that was the bad sign but then she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me, and sleep again. At four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me; I called the maid and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, "Well, you are determined to make. an exaggerated case of it!" Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smiling, happily, and with a face like a girl's and in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there

was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware of our parting's approach - but she was quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. Her last word was when I asked "How do you feel?" "Beautiful." You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to at once her child to care for, educate,

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establish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly, all just as she would require were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years go to London for a few days' talk with Arabel - then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni - but no more "housekeeping" for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope - but my root is taken and remains.

I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.

She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well-very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine he will want what he never had- that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom and genius and piety- I have had everything and shall not forget.

God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa goes with me dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day or two before the end she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, - Isa wrote

to you in consequence. I shall be heard

or at 151, rue de Grenelle, St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, ROBERT BROWNING.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

TO HIS MOTHER

THE ATHENAEUM, LONDON,
December 24, 1863.

My dearest Mother,

Business first. I am delighted with the wooden platter and bread knife, for which articles I have long had a fancy; the platter too I like all the better for not having an inscription, only a border of corn ears. Dear Rowland's book has not yet come. Thank her for it all the same, and tell her I will write to her when I receive it. And thank dear K. for her letter, and dear Fan for her note, and receive all my thanks for your own, my dearest mother.

While writing these last words I have heard the startling news of the sudden death of Thackeray. He was found dead in his bed this morning. If you have not seen it in the newspapers before you read this, you will all be greatly startled and shocked, as I am. I have heard no particulars. I cannot say that I thoroughly liked him, though we were on friendly terms; and he is not, to my thinking, a great writer. Still, this sudden cessation of an existence so lately before one's eyes, so vigorous and full of life, and so considerable a power in the country, is very sobering, if, indeed, after the shock of a fortnight ago, one still needs sobering. To-day I am fortyone, the middle of life, in any case, and for me, perhaps, much more than the middle. I have ripened, and am ripening so slowly, that I shall be glad of as much time as possible, yet I can feel, I rejoice to say, an inward spring which seems more and more to gain strength, and to promise to resist outward shocks, if they must come, however rough. But of this inward spring one must not talk, for it does not like being talked about, and threatens

to depart if one will not leave it in mystery. . .

My love to all at Fox How on Christmas Day.

Your ever most affectionate

M. A.

GEORGE MEREDITH

TO ARTHUR G. MEREDITH

Box HILL, DORKING, SURREY, ENGLAND, April 25, 1872.

My dear Arthur,

Strong friendships and intercommunications with foreigners will refresh your life in this island, and the Germans are solid. Stick to a people not at the mercy of their impulses, and besides a people with so fine a literature must be worthy of love. Captain Maxse wrote to me the other day about an examination in the Foreign Office for the post of Chinese interpreter for you: if successful to go out to China with a salary of £200 per annum and learn the Chinese tongue of li-ro and fo-ki. I declined it: I hope I was right. I felt sure that it would be repugnant to you to spend your life in China, where the climate is hard, society horrid, life scarcely (to my thought) endurable. Perhaps you might have chosen Japan. But it would have been for very many years perpetual banishment. Let me hear what you think of it. Study Cicero carefully. He is a fine moralist, a friend of scholars, a splendid trainer for a public life of any serious and exalted ambition. What you say of our religion is what thoughtful men feel and that you at the same time can recognise its moral value, is matter of rejoicing to me. The Christian teaching is sound and good: the ecclesiastical dogma is an instance of the poverty of humanity's mind hitherto, and has often in its hideous fangs and claws shown whence we draw our descent. Don't think that the obscenities mentioned in the Bible do harm to children. The Bible is outspoken upon facts, and rightly. It is because the world is pruriently and

stupidly shamefaced that it cannot come in contact with the Bible without convulsions. I agree with the Frommen that the book should be read out, for Society is a wanton hypocrite, and I would accommodate her in nothing: though for the principle of Society I hold that men should be ready to lay down their lives. Belief in the religion has done and does this good to the young; it floats them through the perilous sensual period when the animal appetites most need control and transmutation. If you have not the belief, set yourself to love virtue by understanding that it is your best guide both as to what is due to others and what is for your positive personal good. If your mind honestly rejects it, you must call on your mind to supply its place from your own resources. Otherwise you will have only half done your work, and that is always mischievous. Pray attend to my words on this subject. You know how Socrates loved Truth. Virtue and Truth are one. Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that he leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant. grows to the light. The school has only to look through history for a scientific assurance of it. And do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks Your loving father, GEORGE MEREDITH.

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even if there was nothing else, even if there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we should always be glad to pass a nod. I say "even if there was not." But you know right well there is. Do not suppose that I shall ever forget those long, bitter nights, when I coughed and coughed and was so unhappy, and you were so patient and loving with a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I wish I might become a man worth talking of, if it were only that you should not have thrown away your pains.

Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us to do them. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these." My dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife my dear old nurse, God will make good to you all the good that you have done, and mercifully forgive you all the evil. And next time when the spring comes round, and everything is beginning once again, if you should happen to think that you might have had a child of your own, and that it was hard you should have spent so many years taking care of some one else's prodigal, just you think this you have been for a great deal in my life; you have made much that there is in me, just as surely as if you had conceived me; and there are sons who are more ungrateful to their own mothers than I am to you. For I am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy, and it is with a very sincere emotion that I write myself your little boy,

LOUIS.

To R. A. M. STEVENSON
La Solitude, Hyères (October, 1883)

My dear Bob, Yes, I got both your letters at Lyons, but have been since then decading in several steps. Toothache; fever; Ferrier's death; lung. Now it is decided I am to leave tomorrow, penniless, for Nice to see Dr. Williams.

I was much struck by your last. I have written a breathless note on Real

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