I told you in last Fors to learn the 15th chapter of Genesis by heart.
Too probably, you have done nothing of the sort; but, at any rate, let
us now read it together, that I may tell you, of each verse, what I
wanted, (and still beg,) you to learn it for.
1. “The word of God came to Abram.” Of course you can’t imagine such a
thing as that the word of God should ever come to you? Is that because
you are worse, or better, than Abram?—because you are a more, or less,
civilized person than he? I leave you to answer that question for
yourself;—only, as I have told you often before, but cannot repeat too
often, find out first what the Word is; and don’t suppose that the
printed thing in your hand, which you call a Bible, is the Word of God,
and that the said Word may therefore always be bought at a pious
stationer’s for eighteen-pence.
Farther, in the “Explanatory and Critical Commentary and Revision of
the Translation” (of the Holy Bible) by Bishops and other Clergy of the
Established Church, published in 1871, by Mr. John Murray, you will
find the interesting statement, respecting this verse, that “This is
the first time that the expression—so frequent afterwards—‘the Word of
the Lord’ occurs in the Bible.” The expression is certainly rather
frequent afterwards; and one might have perhaps expected from the
Episcopal and clerical commentators, on this, its first occurrence,
some slight notice of the probable meaning of it. They proceed,
however, without farther observation, to discuss certain problems,
suggested to them by the account of Abram’s vision, respecting
somnambulism; on which, though one would have thought few persons more
qualified than themselves to give an account of that condition, they
arrive at no particular conclusion.
But even their so carefully limited statement is only one-third true.
It is true of the Hebrew Law; not of the New Testament:—of the entire
Bible, it is true of the English version only; not of the Latin, nor
the Greek. Nay, it is very importantly and notably untrue of those
earlier versions.
There are three words in Latin, expressive of utterance in three very
different manners; namely, ‘verbum,’ a word, ‘vox,’ a voice, and
‘sermo,’ a sermon.
Now, in the Latin Bible, when St. John says “the Word was in the
beginning,” he says, the ‘Verbum’ was in the beginning. But here, when
somebody (nobody knows who, and that is a bye question of some
importance,) is represented as saying, “The word of the Lord came to
Abram,” what somebody really says, is that “There was made to Abram a
‘Sermon’ of the Lord.”
Does it not seem possible that one of the almost unconscious reasons of
your clergy for not pointing out this difference in expression, may be
a doubt whether you ought not rather to desire to hear God preach, than
them?
But the Latin word ‘verbum,’ from which you get ‘verbal’ and
‘verbosity,’ is a very obscure and imperfect rendering of the great
Greek word ‘Logos,’ from which you get ‘logic,’ and ‘theology,’ and all
the other logies.
And the phrase “word of the Lord,” which the Bishops, with unusual
episcopic clairvoyance, have really observed to ‘occur frequently
afterwards’ in the English Bible, is, in the Greek Bible always “the
Logos of the Lord.” But this Sermon to Abraham is only ‘rhema,’ an
actual or mere word; in his interpretation of which, I see, my good
Dean of Christ Church quotes the Greek original of Sancho’s proverb,
“Fair words butter no parsneps.” Which we shall presently see to have
been precisely Abram’s—(of course cautiously expressed)—feeling, on
this occasion. But to understand his feeling, we must look what this
sermon of the Lord’s was.
The sermon (as reported), was kind, and clear. “Fear not, Abram, I am
thy Shield, and thy exceeding great Reward,” (‘reward’ being the
poetical English of our translators—the real phrase being ‘thy
exceeding great pay, or gain’). Meaning, “You needn’t make an iron
tent, with a revolving gun in the middle of it, for I am your tent and
artillery in one; and you needn’t care to get a quantity of property,
for I am your property; and you needn’t be stiff about your rights of
property, because nobody will dispute your right to Me.”
To which Abram answers, “Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go
childless.”
Meaning,—“Yes, I know that;—but what is the good of You to me, if I
haven’t a child? I am a poor mortal: I don’t care about the Heavens or
You; I want a child.”
Meaning this, at least, if the Latin and English Bibles are right in
their translation—“I am thy great gain.” But the Greek Bible differs
from them; and puts the promise in a much more tempting form to the
modern English mind. It does not represent God as offering Himself; but
something far better than Himself, actually exchangeable property!
Wealth, according to Mr. John Stuart Mill. Here is indeed a prospect
for Abram!—and something to refuse, worth thinking twice about. For the
Septuagint reads, “Fear not, Abram. I am thy Protector, and thou shalt
have an exceeding great pay.” Practically, just as if, supposing Sir
Stafford Northcote to represent the English nation of the glorious
future, a Sermon of the Lord should come just now to him, saying, “Fear
not, Sir Stafford, I am thy Devastation; and thou shalt have an
exceeding great surplus.”
On which supposition, Abram’s answer is less rude, but more
astonishing. “Oh God, what wilt thou give me? What good is money to me,
who am childless?”
Again, as if Sir Stafford Northcote should answer, in the name of the
British people, saying, “Lord God, what wilt thou give me? What is the
good to me of a surplus? What can I make of surplus? It is children
that I want, not surplus!”
A truly notable parliamentary utterance on the Budget, if it might be!
Not for a little while yet, thinks Sir Stafford; perhaps, think wiser
and more sorrowful people than he, not until England has had to stone,
according to the law of Deuteronomy xxi. 18, some of the children she
has got: or at least to grapeshot them. I couldn’t get anything like
comfortable rooms in the Pea Hen at St. Alban’s, the day before
yesterday, because the Pea Hen was cherishing, for chickens under her
wings, ever so many officers of the Royal Artillery; and some beautiful
sixteen-pounders,—exquisite fulfilments of all that science could
devise, in those machines; which were unlimbered in the market-place,
on their way to Sheffield—where I am going myself, as it happens. I
wonder much, in the name of my mistress, whose finger is certainly in
this pie, what business we have there, (both of us,) the black
machines, and I. As Atropos would have it, too, I had only been making
out, with good Mr. Douglas’s help, in Woolwich Repository on Wednesday
last, a German Pea Hen’s inscription on a sixteen-pounder of the
fourteenth century:—
Ich bin fürwahr, ein Grober Baur
Ver frist mein ayr, es wurd ihm Saur.
Verse 5th. “And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Tell now the
stars, if thou be able to number them. So shall thy seed be.”
Of course you would have answered God instantly, and told Him the exact
number of the stars, and all their magnitudes. Simple Abram, conceiving
that, even if he did count all he could see, there might yet be a few
more out of sight, does not try.
Verse 6th. “And he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for
righteousness.”
That, on the whole, is the primary verse of the entire Bible. If that
is true, the rest is worth whatever Heaven is worth; if that is untrue,
the rest is worth nothing. You had better, therefore, if you can, learn
it also in Greek and Latin.
“Καὶ ἐπίστευσεν Ἀβραμ τῷ Θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην.
“Credidit Abram Deo, et reputatum est illo in justitiam.”
If, then, that text be true, it will follow that you also, if you would
have righteousness counted to you, must believe God. And you can’t
believe Him if He never says anything to you. Whereupon it will be
desirable again to consider if He ever has said anything to you; and if
not, why not.
After this verse, I don’t understand much of the chapter myself—but I
never expect to understand everything in the Bible, or even more than a
little; and will make what I can of it.
Verses 7th, 8th. “And He said, I the Lord brought thee, to give thee
this land, to inherit it.
“But he said, Lord, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?”
Now, I don’t see how he could know it better than by being told so; nor
how he knew it any better, after seeing a lamp moving between
half-carcases. But we will at least learn, as well as we can, what
happened; and think it over.
The star-lesson was of course given in the night; and, in the morning,
Abram slays the five creatures, and watches their bodies all day.
‘Such an absurd thing to do—to cut rams and cows in two, to please
God!’
Indeed it seems so; yet perhaps is better than cutting men in two to
please ourselves; and we spend thirty millions a year in preparations
for doing that. How many more swiftly divided carcases of horses and
men, think you, my Christian friends, have the fowls fed on, not driven
away,—finding them already carved for their feast, or blown into small
and convenient morsels, by the military gentlemen of Europe, in
sacrifice to—their own epaulettes, (poor gilded and eyeless idols!)
during the past seventy and six years of this one out of the forty
centuries since Abram?
“The birds divided he not.” A turtle dove, or in Greek ‘cooing dove;’
and a pigeon, or in Greek ‘dark dove;’ or black dove, such as came to
Dodona;—these were not to be cut through breast and backbone! Why? Why,
indeed, any of this butchery and wringing of necks? Not wholly,
perhaps, for Abram’s amusement, or God’s; like our coursing and
pigeon-shooting;—but then, all the more earnestly one asks, why?
The Episcopal commentary tells you, (usefully this time) that the
beasts were divided, because among all nations it was then the most
solemn attestation of covenant to pass between halves of beasts. But
the birds?
We are not sure, by the way, how far the cleaving might reach, without
absolute division. Read Leviticus i., 15 to 17, and v., 6 to 10. ‘You
have nothing to do with those matters,’ you think? I don’t say you
have; but in my schools you must know your Bible, and the meaning of
it, or want of meaning, at least a little more definitely than you do
now, before I let you throw the book away for ever. So have patience
with it a little while; for indeed until you know something of this
Bible, I can’t go on to teach you any Koran, much less any Dante or
Shakspeare. Have patience, therefore,—and you will need, probably, more
than you think; for I am sadly afraid that you don’t at present know so
much as the difference between a burnt-offering and a sin-offering; nor
between a sin-offering and a trespass-offering,—do you? (Lev. v. 15);
so how can you possibly know anything about Abram’s doves, or
afterwards about Ion’s,—not to speak of the Madonna’s? The whole story
of the Ionic migration, and the carving of those Ionic capitals, which
our architects don’t know how to draw to this day, is complicated with
the tradition of the saving of Ion’s life by his recognition of a very
small ‘trespass’—a servant’s momentary ‘blasphemy.’ Hearing it, he
poured the wine he was about to drink out upon the ground. A dove,
flying down from the temple cornice, dipped her beak in it, and died,
for the wine had been poisoned by—his mother. But the meaning of all
that myth is involved in this earlier and wilder mystery of the Mount
of the Amorite.
On the slope of it, down to the vale of Eshcol, sat Abram, as the sun
ripened its grapes through the glowing day; the shadows lengthening at
last under the crags of Machpelah;—the golden light warm on Ephron’s
field, still Ephron’s, wild with wood. “And as the sun went down, an
horror of great darkness fell upon Abram.”
Indigestion, most likely, thinks modern philosophy. Accelerated
cerebration, with automatic conservation of psychic force, lucidly
suggests Dr. Carpenter. Derangement of the sensori-motor processes,
having certain relations of nextness, and behaviour uniformly depending
on that nextness, condescendingly explains Professor Clifford.
Well, my scientific friends, if ever God does you the grace to give you
experience of the sensations, either of horror, or darkness, even to
the extent your books and you inflict them on my own tired soul, you
will come out on the other side of that shadow with newer views on many
subjects than have occurred yet to you,—novelty-hunters though you be.
“Behold, thy seed shall be strangers, in a land not theirs.” Again, the
importunate question returns, ‘When was this written?’ But the really
practical value of the passage for ourselves, is the definite
statement, alike by the Greeks and Hebrews, of dream, as one of the
states in which knowledge of the future may be distinctly given. The
truth of this statement we must again determine for ourselves. Our
dreams are partly in our power, by management of daily thought and
food; partly, involuntary and accidental—very apt to run in contrary
lines from those naturally to be expected of them; and partly, (at
least, so say all the Hebrew prophets, and all great Greek, Latin, and
English thinkers,) prophetic. Whether what Moses, Homer, David, Daniel,
the Evangelists and St. Paul, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Bacon,
think on this matter, or what the last-whelped little curly-tailed
puppy of the Newington University thinks, is most likely to be
true—judge as you will.
“In the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the
iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”
What was the iniquity of the Amorites, think you, and what kind of
people were they? Anything like ourselves? or wide-mouthed and
goggle-eyed,—terrifically stalking above the vineyard stakes of Eshcol?
If like us, in any wise, is it possible that we also may be committing
iniquity, capable of less and more fulness, through such a space as
four hundred years? Questions worth pausing at; and we will at least
try to be a little clear-headed as to Amorite personality.
We habitually speak of the Holy Land as the Land of ‘Canaan.’ The
‘promised’ land was indeed that of Canaan, with others. But Israel
never got it. They got only the Mount of the Amorites; for the promise
was only to be perfected on condition of their perfect obedience.
Therefore, I asked you to learn Genesis x. 15, and Genesis x. 16,
separately. For all the Canaanites were left, to prove Israel, (Judges
iii. 3,) and a good many of the Amorites and Jebusites too, (Judges
iii. 5–7,) but in the main Israel subdued the last two races, and held
the hill country from Lebanon to Hebron, and the capital, Jerusalem,
for their own. And if instead of ‘Amorites,’ you will read generally
‘Highlanders,’ (which the word means,) and think of them, for a
beginning of notion, simply as Campbells and Macgregors of the East,
getting themselves into relations with the pious Israelites closely
resembling those of the Highland race and mind of Scotland with its
evangelical and economical Lowlanders, you will read these parts of
your Bible in at least an incipiently intelligent manner. And above
all, you will, or may, understand that the Amorites had a great deal of
good in them: that they and the Jebusites were on the whole a generous
and courteous people,—so that, when Abram dwells with the Amorite
princes, Mamre and Eshcol, they are faithful allies to him; and when he
buys his grave from Ephron the Hittite, and David the threshing floor
from Araunah the Jebusite, both of the mountaineers behave just as the
proudest and truest Highland chief would. ‘What is that between me and
thee?’ “All these things did Araunah, as a King, give unto the King—and
Araunah said unto the King, The Lord thy God accept thee.” Not our God,
you see;—but giving sadly, as the Sidonian widow begging,—with claim of
no part in Israel.
‘Mere oriental formulæ,’ says the Cockney modern expositor—‘offers made
in fore-knowledge that they would not be accepted.’
No, curly-tailed bow-wow; it is only you and other such automatic
poodles who are ‘formulæ.’ Automatic, by the way, you are not; we all
know how to wind you up to run with a whirr, like toy-mice.
Well, now read consecutively, but quietly, Numbers xiii. 22–29, xxi.
13–26, Deuteronomy iii. 8–13, and Joshua x. 6–14, and you will get a
notion or two, which with those already obtained you may best arrange
as follows.
Put the Philistines, and giants, or bulls, of Bashan, out of the way at
present; they are merely elements of physical malignant force, sent
against Samson, Saul, and David, as a half-human shape of lion or
bear,—carrying off the ark of God in their mouths, and not knowing in
the least what to do with it. You already know Tyre as the trading
power, Ethiopia as the ignorant—Egypt as the wise—slave; then the
Amorites, among the children of Ham, correspond to the great mountain
and pastoral powers of the Shemites; and are far the noblest and purest
of the race: abiding in their own fastnesses, desiring no conquest, but
as Sihon, admitting no invader;—holding their crags so that nothing can
be taken out of the hand of the Amorite but with the sword and bow,
(Gen. xlviii. 22;) yet living chiefly by pasture and agriculture;
worshipping, in their early dynasties, the one eternal God; and, in the
person of their great high priest, Melchizedec, but a few years before
this vision, blessing the father of the faithful, and feeding him with
the everlasting sacraments of earth,—bread and wine,—in the level
valley of the Kings, under Salem, the city of peace.
Truly, ‘the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.’
I have given you enough to think of, for this time; but you can’t work
it out rightly without a clearly intelligible map of Palestine, and
raised models of the districts of Hebron and Jerusalem, which I will
provide as soon as possible, according to St. George’s notions of what
such things should be, for the Sheffield museum: to the end that at
least, in that district of the Yorkshire Amorites, singularly like the
Holy Land in its level summits and cleft defiles, it may be understood
what England also had once to bring forth of blessing in her own vales
of peace; and how her gathering iniquity may bring upon her,—(and at
this instant, as I write, early on Good Friday, the malignant hail of
spring time, slaying blossom and leaf, smites rattling on the ground
that should be soft with flowers,) such day of ruin as the great hail
darkened in the going down to Beth-horon, and the sun, that had bronzed
their corn and flushed their grape, prolonged on Ajalon, implacable.
“And it came to pass, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold,
a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp which passed between those
pieces.”
What a lovely vision, half of it, at any rate, to the eye of modern
progress! Foretelling, doubtless, smoking furnaces, and general
civilization, in this Amorite land of barbarous vines and fig-trees!
Yes—my progressive friends. That was precisely what the vision did
foretell,—in the first half of it; and not very many summer mornings
afterwards, Abram going out for his walk in the dew round his farm,
[39] saw its fulfilment in quite literal terms, on the horizon. (Gen.
xix. 28.) The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
But what do you make of the other part of the night-vision? Striking of
oil? and sale of numerous patent lamps? But Abram never did strike any
oil—except olive, which could only be had on the usual terms of
laborious beating and grinding, and in moderate quantities. What do you
make of the second half of the vision?
Only a minute part of its infinite prophecy was fulfilled in those
flames of the Paradise of Lot. For the two fires were the sign of the
presence of the Person who accepted the covenant, in passing between
the pieces of the victim. And they shone, therefore, for the signature
of His Name; that name which we pray may be hallowed; and for what that
name entirely means;—‘the Lord, merciful and gracious,—and that will by
no means clear the guilty.’
For as on the one side He is like a refiner’s fire, so that none may
abide the day of His coming,—so on the other He is the Light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And all the pain of
grief and punishment, temporal or eternal, following on the broken
covenant; and all the sweet guidance of the lamp to the feet and the
light to the path, granted to those who keep it, are meant by the
passing of the darkened and undarkened flames.
Finish now the learning this whole chapter accurately, and when you
come to the eighteenth verse, note how much larger the promised land
was, than we usually imagine it; and what different manner of
possession the Israelites got of its borders, by the waters of Babylon,
and rivers of Egypt, (compare Jeremiah xxxix. 9, with xliii. 6 and 7)
than they might have had, if they had pleased.
And now, when you have got well into your heads that the Holy Land is,
broadly, the mountain or highland of the Amorites, (compare Deut. i. 7,
20, 44, Numbers xiii. 29,) look to the verse which you have probably
quoted often, “Behold upon the mountains the feet of Him that bringeth
good tidings,”—without ever asking what mountains, or what tidings. The
mountains are these Amorite crags, and the tidings are of the last
destruction of the Hamite power, in the other three great brethren,
Cush, Mizraim, and Phut. Read your Nahum through slowly; and learn the
eighth and ninth verses of the third chapter, to be always remembered
as the completion of the fifteenth, which you know the first half of so
well already—though I suppose you rarely go on to its practical close,
“Oh Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows; for the wicked
shall no more pass through thee”—this ‘passing,’ observe, being the
ruinous war of the bitter and hasty nation, (compare Habakkuk i. 6–8,
with the last verse of Nahum,) which spiritually is the type of all
ruinous and violent passion, such as now passes continually to and fro
in this English land of ours.
I am not much in a humour to examine further to-day the passing of its
slower molluscous Assyrians; but may at least affirm what I believe at
last to be the sure conclusion of my young hunter of Arundel; that the
spiral of the shell uniformly increases its coil, from birth to
maturity. Here are examples of the minute species, sent me by Mr.
Sillar, in three stages of growth; the little black spots giving them
in their natural size (with much economic skill of Mr. Burgess’ touch).
The three magnified spirals you may as well copy, and find out how many
these little creatures may have. I had taken them for the young of the
common snail when I wrote last; but we will have all our facts clear
some day, both concerning bees, and slugs, and the larger creatures,
industrious or lazy, whom they are meant to teach.
But I want to finish my letter for this time with a word or two more of
my Scottish Amorite aunt, after she was brought down into Lowland life
by her practical tanner. She, a pure dark-eyed dove-priestess, if ever
there was one, of Highland Dodona. [40] Strangely, the kitchen
servant-of-all-work in the house at Rose Terrace was a very old “Mause”
who might well have been the prototype of the Mause of ‘Old Mortality,’
[41] but had even a more solemn, fearless, and patient faith, fastened
in her by extreme suffering; for she had been nearly starved to death
when she was a girl, and had literally picked the bones out of cast-out
dust-heaps to gnaw; and ever afterwards, to see the waste of an atom of
food was as shocking to her as blasphemy. “Oh, Miss Margaret!” she said
once to my mother, who had shaken some crumbs off a dirty plate out of
the window, “I had rather you had knocked me down.” She would make her
dinner upon anything in the house that the other servants wouldn’t
eat;—often upon potato skins, giving her own dinner away to any poor
person she saw; and would always stand during the whole church service,
(though at least seventy years old when I knew her, and very feeble,)
if she could persuade any wild Amorite out of the streets to take her
seat. Her wrinkled and worn face, moveless in resolution, and patience;
incapable of smile, and knit sometimes perhaps too severely against
Jessie and me, if we wanted more creamy milk to our porridge, or jumped
off our favourite box on Sunday,—(‘Never mind, John,’ said Jessie to
me, once, seeing me in an unchristian state of provocation on this
subject, ‘when we’re married, we’ll jump off boxes all day long, if we
like!’) may have been partly instrumental in giving me that slight bias
against the Evangelical religion which I confess to be sometimes
traceable in my later works: but I never can be thankful enough for
having seen, in her, the Scottish Puritan spirit in its perfect faith
and force; and been enabled therefore afterwards to trace its agency in
the reforming policy of Scotland with the reverence and honour it
deserves.
My aunt was of a far gentler temper, but still, to me, remained at a
wistful distance. She had been much saddened by the loss of three of
her children, before her husband’s death. Little Peter, especially, had
been the corner-stone of her love’s building; and it was thrown down
swiftly:—white-swelling came in the knee; he suffered much; and grew
weaker gradually, dutiful always, and loving, and wholly patient. She
wanted him one day to take half a glass of port wine,—and took him on
her knee, and put it to his lips. ‘Not now, mamma;—in a minute,’ said
he; and put his head on her shoulder, and gave one long, low sigh, and
died. Then there was Catherine; and—I forget the other little
daughter’s name. I did not see them; my mother told me of them;—eagerly
always about Catherine, who had been her own favourite. My aunt had
been talking earnestly one day with her husband about these two
children; planning this and that for their schooling and what not: at
night, for a little while she could not sleep; and as she lay thinking,
she saw the door of the room open; and two spades come into it, and
stand at the foot of her bed. Both the children were dead within brief
time afterwards. I was about to write ‘within a fortnight’—but I cannot
be sure of remembering my mother’s words accurately.
But when I was in Perth, there were still—Mary, her eldest daughter,
who looked after us children when Mause was too busy,—James and John,
William and Andrew; (I can’t think whom the unapostolic William was
named after; he became afterwards a good physician in London, and
Tunbridge Wells; his death, last year, is counted among the others that
I have spoken of as recently leaving me very lonely). But the boys were
then all at school or college,—the scholars, William and Andrew, only
came home to tease Jessie and me, and eat the biggest jargonel pears;
the collegians were wholly abstract; and the two girls and I played in
our quiet ways on the North-inch, and by the ‘Lead,’ a stream, ‘led’
from the Tay past Rose Terrace, into the town for molinary purposes;
and long ago, I suppose, bricked over, or choked with rubbish; but then
lovely, and a perpetual treasure of flowing diamond to us children.
Mary, by the way, was nearly fourteen—fair, blue-eyed, and moderately
pretty; and as pious as Jessie, without being quite so zealous. And I
scarcely know if those far years of summer sunshine were dreams, or if
this horror of darkness is one, to-day, at St. Albans, where, driven
out of the abbey, unable to bear the sight of its restorations, and out
of the churchyard, where I would fain have stayed to draw, by the black
plague-wind, I take refuge from all in an old apple-woman’s shop,
because she reminds me of my Croydon Amorite aunt,—and her little
window of the one in the parlour beside the shop in Market Street. She
sells comic songs as well as apples. I invest a penny in ‘The Union
Jack,’ and find, in the course of conversation, that the result of our
unlimited national prosperity upon her, is, that where she used to take
twopence from one customer, she now takes five farthings from
five,—that her rates are twelve shillings instead of six,—that she is
very tired of it all, and hopes God will soon take her to heaven.
I have been a little obscure in direction about the Egyptian asterisk
in last Fors. The circle in the middle is to be left solid; the rays
round are to be cut quite shallow; not in deep furrows, as in wood, but
like rising, sharp, cliff-edged harbours with flat bottoms of sand; as
little of the hard rock being cut away as may be.
The Etrurian Leucothea has come at last; but please let my readers
observe that my signature to it means only that it will answer our
purpose, not that it is a good print, for Mr. Parker’s agent is a
‘Grober Baur,’ and will keep neither time nor troth in impressions.
Farther, I have now put into Mr. Ward’s hands a photograph from a
practice-sketch of my own at Oxford, in pure lead pencil, on grey paper
secured with ink on the outlines, and touched with white on the lights.
It is of a stuffed Kingfisher,—(one can’t see a live one in England
nowadays,) and done at full speed of hand; aid it is to be copied for a
balance practice to the slow spiral lines.