_[Edinburgh] December 23, 1874._
_Monday._--I have come from a concert, and the concert was rather a
disappointment. Not so my afternoon skating--Duddingston, our big loch,
is bearing; and I wish you could have seen it this afternoon, covered
with people, in thin driving snow flurries, the big hill grim and white
and alpine overhead in the thick air, and the road up the gorge, as it
were into the heart of it, dotted black with traffic. Moreover, I _can_
skate a little bit; and what one can do is always pleasant to do.
_Tuesday._--I got your letter to-day, and was so glad thereof. It was of
good omen to me also. I worked from ten to one (my classes are suspended
now for Xmas holidays), and wrote four or five Portfolio pages of my
Buckinghamshire affair. Then I went to Duddingston and skated all
afternoon. If you had seen the moon rising, a perfect sphere of smoky
gold, in the dark air above the trees, and the white loch thick with
skaters, and the great hill, snow-sprinkled, overhead! It was a sight
for a king.
_Wednesday._--I stayed on Duddingston to-day till after nightfall. The
little booths that hucksters set up round the edge were marked each one
by its little lamp. There were some fires too; and the light, and the
shadows of the people who stood round them to warm themselves, made a
strange pattern all round on the snow-covered ice. A few people with
torches began to travel up and down the ice, a lit circle travelling
along with them over the snow. A gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the
trees and the kirk on the promontory among perturbed and vacillating
clouds.
The walk home was very solemn and strange. Once, through a broken gorge,
we had a glimpse of a little space of mackerel sky, moon-litten, on the
other side of the hill; the broken ridges standing grey and spectral
between; and the hilltop over all, snow-white, and strangely magnified
in size.
This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may read it on Christmas Day
for company. I hope it may be good company to you.
_Thursday._--Outside, it snows thick and steadily. The gardens before
our house are now a wonderful fairy forest. And O, this whiteness of
things, how I love it, how it sends the blood about my body! Maurice de
Guerin hated snow; what a fool he must have been! Somebody tried to put
me out of conceit with it by saying that people were lost in it. As if
people don't get lost in love, too, and die of devotion to art; as if
everything worth were not an occasion to some people's end.
What a wintry letter this is! Only I think it is winter seen from the
inside of a warm greatcoat. And there is, at least, a warm heart about
it somewhere. Do you know, what they say in Xmas stories is true. I
think one loves their friends more dearly at this season.--Ever your
faithful friend,