You will do me and the Genius of History a real favour, if you persist in
these examinations and excavations to the utmost length possible for you!
It is long since I read a letter so interesting as yours of yesterday.
Clearly enough you are upon the very battle-ground;--and I, it is also
clear, have only looked up towards it from the slope of Mill Hill. Were
not the weather so wet, were not, etc., etc., so many _etceteras_, I
could almost think of running up to join you still! But that is
evidently unfeasible at present.
The opening of that burial-heap blazes strangely in my thoughts: these
are the very jawbones that were clenched together in deadly rage, on this
very ground, 197 years ago! It brings the matter home to one, with a
strange veracity,--as if for the first time one saw it to be no fable and
theory but a dire fact. I will beg for a tooth and a bullet;
authenticated by your own eyes and word of honour!--Our Scotch friend
too, making turnip manure of it, he is part of the Picture. I understand
almost all the Netherlands battlefields have already given up their bones
to British husbandly; why not the old English next? Honour to thrift. If
of 5000 wasted men, you can make a few usable turnips, why, do it!
The more sketches and details you can contrive to send me, the better. I
want to know for one thing whether there is any _house_ on Cloisterwell;
what house that was that I saw from the slope of Naseby height
(Mill-hill, I suppose), and fancied to be Dust Hill Farm? It must lie
about North by West from Naseby Church, perhaps near a mile off. You
say, one cannot see Dust Hill at all, much less any farm house of Dust
Hill, from that Naseby Height?
But why does the Obelisk stand there? It might as well stand at Charing
Cross; the blockhead that it is! I again wish I had wings: alas, I wish
many things; that the gods would but annihilate Time and Space, which
would include all things!
In great haste, Yours most truly,