_[Edinburgh], Wednesday, September 24th 1873._
I have found another "flowering isle." All this beautiful, quiet, sunlit
day, I have been out in the country; down by the sea on my favourite
coast between Granton and Queensferry. There was a delicate, delicious
haze over the firth and sands on one side, and on the other was the
shadow of the woods all riven with great golden rifts of sunshine. A
little faint talk of waves upon the beach; the wild strange crying of
seagulls over the sea; and the hoarse wood-pigeons and shrill, sweet
robins full of their autumn love-making among the trees, made up a
delectable concerto of peaceful noises. I spent the whole afternoon
among these sights and sounds with Simpson. And we came home from
Queensferry on the outside of the coach and four, along a beautiful way
full of ups and downs among woody, uneven country, laid out (fifty years
ago, I suppose) by my grandfather, on the notion of Hogarth's line of
beauty. You see my taste for roads is hereditary.
_Friday._--I was wakened this morning by a long flourish of bugles and a
roll upon the drums--the _reveille_ at the Castle. I went to the window;
it was a grey, quiet dawn, a few people passed already up the street
between the gardens, already I heard the noise of an early cab somewhere
in the distance, most of the lamps had been extinguished but not all,
and there were two or three lit windows in the opposite facade that
showed where sick people and watchers had been awake all night and knew
not yet of the new, cool day. This appealed to me with a special
sadness: how often in the old times my nurse and I had looked across at
these, and sympathised!
I wish you would read Michelet's _Louis Quatorze et la Revocation de
l'Edit de Nantes_. I read it out in the garden, and the autumnal trees
and weather, and my own autumnal humour, and the pitiable prolonged
tragedies of Madame and of Moliere, as they look, darkling and sombre,
out of their niches in the great gingerbread facade of the _Grand Age_,
go wonderfully hand in hand.
I wonder if my revised paper has pleased the Saturday? If it has not, I
shall be rather sorry--no, very sorry indeed--but not surprised and
certainly not hurt. It will be a great disappointment; but I am glad to
say that, among all my queasy, troublesome feelings, I have not a
sensitive vanity. Not that I am not as conceited as you know me to be;
only I go easy over the coals in that matter.
I have been out reading Hallam in the garden; and have been talking with
my old friend the gardener, a man of singularly hard favour and few
teeth. He consulted me this afternoon on the choice of books, premising
that his taste ran mainly on war and travel. On travel I had to own at
once my ignorance. I suggested Kinglake, but he had read that; and so,
finding myself here unhorsed, I turned about and at last recollected
Southey's _Lives of the Admirals_, and the volumes of Macaulay
containing the wars of William. Can you think of any other for this
worthy man? I believe him to hold me in as high an esteem as any one can
do; and I reciprocate his respect, for he is quite an intelligent
companion.
On Saturday morning I read Morley's article aloud to Bob in one of the
walks of the public garden. I was full of it and read most excitedly;
and we were ever, as we went to and fro, passing a bench where a man sat
reading the Bible aloud to a small circle of the devout. This man is
well known to me, sits there all day, sometimes reading, sometimes
singing, sometimes distributing tracts. Bob laughed much at the
opposition preachers--I never noticed it till he called my attention to
the other; but it did not seem to me like opposition--does it to
you?--each in his way was teaching what he thought best.
Last night, after reading Walt Whitman a long while for my attempt to
write about him, I got _tete-montee_, rushed out up to M. S., came in,
took out _Leaves of Grass_, and without giving the poor unbeliever time
to object, proceeded to wade into him with favourite passages. I had at
least this triumph, that he swore he must read some more of him.--Ever
your faithful friend,