and like the tender dew in her intense pity and gentle unspeakable helpfulness, and like a reviving breeze in her strong, clear, decided opinions, and instant perceptions of what was the right thing to do or say."

CHAPTER XXX.

READJUSTMENT.

SHE passed the winter of 1873-74 at Cambridge, and the lonely season, apart from all familiar and beloved surroundings, tried her brave spirit sorely. When in the spring she went to Dunkeld in Perthshire, the place where she had spent happy weeks in 1859, and among the scenes that had such power over her, one sees in her words a revival of the heart. The winter of 187475 was passed in Edinburgh, near her beloved Archie and Mary,1 and in all the after winters her home was under the same roof with them; while most of her summers were henceforth passed at Patterdale. Of her other journeyings, the letters themselves will for the most part sufficiently tell the story.

To Mrs. Lorimer.

CAMBRIDGE, Jan. 17, 1874.

I am thinking, how beautiful your view must be looking this clear, keen day, and I trust all is as well and bright within the happy home as when I saw it last that wild evening when my coming disturbed all the young ones grouped around the dear mother-bird, who looked one of the youngest of the party. I have been reading an interesting, thought-rousing paper of Miss Cobbe's on "Heteropathy, Aversion, and Sympathy." Were the latter but more perfect! But it is growing in the race, and one's own aching heart at least recognizes it to be its legitimate aim. I must, however, always believe happiness a vantage-ground

1 Married in 1874.

for the exercise of all virtues. One of the books that I read just now most persistently is lent me by our beloved Mrs. Stirling. It is a very large volume, on "The History of the Doctrine of a Future State." That is for me "the ocean to the river of all thought." I should like you to read Miss Cobbe's paper - it is in the "National Review." She seems to think sympathy with joy comes before sympathy with pain, and makes out her case well with regard to animal, savage, and childish life. But I have always noticed that the ruder, the less cultured natures one knows nowadays are far more capable of being sorry for you than glad with you.

You will wonder, however, what sets me off on these topics, and why I don't tell something of the whereabouts, etc. Dear, there is so little to tell. If I described the house, the squalid street, you would think I was complaining, and I do not even feel much difference. And though the street is very squalid, and I have seen faces as brutalized as in the Old Town of beautiful Edinburgh, this abode stands back from it in a nursery garden, and is quiet and airy as to situation, with about two acres of garden ground in front of it. Very mean and dingy the the little house is, but then, so marvellously cheap. It is really better than I expected, not worse; and the good woman is sensible and obliging, very fond of discoursing to me. She has been married more than forty years, yet her hair is still black, while her good husband's is white as snow. She lost two children in infancy, and had no others. Her husband is everything to her now. "Lord, mum, I often says to myself, what ever should I do if I lost him! I don't feel as if I could get on at all!" And then she rambles off about the nieces and nephews that have fallen to their share, that they have had a terrible hand with," or else helped on to some successful industry.

My one friend, dear Annie Clough, is away just now,

and when she returns she is too busy with her household to have leisure for companionship. But I am attached to her by happy associations, and the sound of her voice reminds me of the days of life. New voices I shall never care to hear. Letters are really a boon here, linking one with happier lives. Tell me of all your darlings. Now I have seen them, I can realize all you say. Good-by, my dear and very sweet Hannah. Are you sure I did not alienate you by disliking over-much the lecture you so kindly took me to? I don't feel now as if I ever should be vehement again about anything. I believe that this period of silence will be good for me. Oh, if I could grow like what I love so absolutely! Never was he vehement against anything that interested others.

To President Porter.

6

DUNKELD, Aug. 13, 1874.

.. I know that you will expect me to write of my husband, for whose sake alone you are so kind to me. Those lines you so much admire ("There is a sweetness in the world's despair ") made a great impression upon Mr. and Mrs. Lewes. She writes: "I think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called Christian Resignation,' and Mr. Lewes when I read it aloud at once exclaimed, How very fine! Read it again." To them, apart from its melodiousness, the charm probably lay in the renunciation of a future bliss, the acceptance of love and sorrow here. You know they are Positivists. Oh, Dr. Porter! You wonder how I can have a doubt of immortality! The very intensity of my desire, my craving to believe that he, my so inexpressibly loved one, lives, as you say, "an intensely real and personal life," defeats itself, I do believe. The overstrained eye loses the power of vision. I was never hope

1 Dr. Holmes says, in Elsie Venner: "All wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own minds, as do even common events, if great interests prove suddenly to attach to their truth or falsehood."

ful nor was he though we were so strangely joyous together. Temperament must colour all things, our faith as well as the rest. I strive, I pray, I die to believe what you do, even more and more. I could not let Mrs. Lewes suppose for a moment I thought as she did. Her gentle hand would not put out any light, however irrational she may hold that intermittent ray which yet is my all. She says in reply: "All that goes to my heart of hearts. It is what I think of almost daily. For death seems to me now a close, real experience, like the approach of autumn or winter, and I am glad to find that advancing life brings this power of imagining the nearness of death I never had till late years." Then again, after alluding to nieces of mine who have been and are with me: "You can feel some sympathy in their cheerfulness, even though sorrow is always your only private good can you not, dear friend? And the time is short at the utmost. The blessed re-union, if it may come, must be patiently waited for, and such good as you can do to others by loving looks and words must seem to you like a closer companionship with the gentleness and benignity which you justly worshipped while it was visibly present, and still more perhaps now it is veiled and is a memory stronger than vision of outward things." I know you will feel an interest in reading her words. I do not forgive me (but you will say truth needs not to be forgiven) — I do not think your view of my husband's position as a religious thinker is quite the correct one. If "the mind that was in Christ," the moral perfectness, the "sweet reasonableness," the soul athirst for God, the utter indifference to the outward things which the bulk of human beings seek after if justice, gentleness, purity, if these make a man a Christian, then indeed he was one. But the " perpetual unrest of thought" you allude to was excited by other subjects, and I think far more vital subjects, than any connected with "positive and historical Christian