* * * * *
_From Mrs. Casaubon to William Ladislaw_, _Esq._, _Stratford-on-Avon_.
DEAR FRIEND,—Your kind letter from Stratford is indeed interesting. Ah,
when shall I have an opportunity of seeing these, and so many other
interesting places! But in a world where duty is _so much_, and so
_always_ with us, why should we regret the voids in our experience which,
after all, life is filling in the experience of others? The work is
advancing, and Mr. Casaubon hopes that the first chapter of the “Key to
All Mythologies” will be fairly copied and completed by the end of
autumn. Mr. Casaubon is going to Cambridge on Saturday to hear Professor
Tösch lecture on the Pittites and some other party, I really forget
which; {130} but it is not often that he takes so much interest in mere
_modern_ history. How curious it sometimes is to think that the great
spirit of humanity and of the world, as you say, keeps working its
way—ah, to what wonderful goal—by means of these obscure difficult
politics: almost unworthy instruments, one is tempted to think. That was
a true line you quoted lately from the ‘Vita Nuova.’ We have no books of
poetry here, except a Lithuanian translation of the Rig Veda. How
delightful it must be to read Dante with a sympathetic fellow-student,
one who has also loved—and _renounced_!—Yours very sincerely,