Sir Henry Maine has sent me the one letter that has rejoiced my heart about the "Study of Psychology." He says: "In this branch of Mr. Lewes's studies I am almost as one of the ignorant, but I think I have understood every sentence in the book, and I believe I have gained great knowledge from it. It has been the most satisfactory piece of work I have done for a long time." I have written to tell him that he has rescued me from my scepticism as to any one's reading a serious book except the author or editor.

The sight of your handwriting on the pamphlet sent me urges me to do the sooner what I should have already done but for a rather sharp illness, which has kept me chiefly in bed for nearly a fortnight, and from which I am not yet quite free.

I enclose a copy of Michael Foster's draft of conditions for the studentship, which I put into the lawyer's hands some ten or twelve days ago, and which is now come to me drawn up in legal form. You said it would interest you to see the draft, and I have been bearing this in mind, but have not been able to go to the desk where the copy lay.

I hope to hear that you have been going on well despite the cruel, restless winds and sad intermittence of sunshine. On the 12th I am going to have two daughters-in-law, five grandchildren, and servant for a week—if I can get well enough, as I have good hope now that I shall. The strawberries will be ripe then, and as I don't eat any myself it would be dolorous not to be able to have the children, and see them enjoy the juicy blessing.

I was beginning to want some news of you, and was almost ready to ask for it. It is the more welcome for having had time to ripen into a decidedly good report of your condition. About myself I have a very poor story to tell, being now in the fifth week of a troublesome illness, in which, like you, I have been partly fed on "poisonous decoctions." To-day, however, happens to show a considerable improvement in my symptoms, and I have been walking in the warmer air with more ease than hitherto. Driving I have not been able to manage for some time, the motion of the carriage shaking me too much. The best of care has been taken of me. I have an excellent country doctor (Mr. Parsons of Godalming) who watches me daily; and Sir James Paget and Dr. Andrew Clark have been down to add their supervision. I begin to think that if I can avoid any evil condition, such as a chill that would bring on a relapse, I may soon be pretty well again. The point to be achieved is to stop the wasting of my not too solid flesh.

I am glad to hear that the third edition of "Theophrastus" has had so lively a movement. If the remainder should be sold off I think it would be well just to print a small number of copies to carry on, and avoid bringing out a cheaper edition too soon after people have been paying for the expensive one.

I have been always able to write my letters and read my proofs, usually in bed before the fatigue of dressing, but the rest of my time has been very unprofitable—spent chiefly in pain and languor. I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.

I feel a perhaps too selfish need to tell you that things have gone ill with me since I last wrote to you. Why do I want to let you know this not agreeable news about myself? Chiefly because I want you to be quite clear that if I do not write to say, "When can you come to me?" it is not from indifference, but from misfortune of another sort. Meanwhile it will do me good to have little items of news from you, when you can find half an hour for the kind deed of writing me a letter. What helps me most is to be told things about others, and your letters are just of the sort I like to have.

I am just now in one of my easier hours, and the demon wind has abated. He seems to enter into my pains with hideous rejoicing.

Thank you for your kind note. There are to be more than as many proofs as you have already had, for which I must crave the valuable aid of your reading.

You will understand all the better how much comfort it is to me to have your help as well as Professor Foster's, when I tell you that for the last eight weeks I have been seriously out of health, and have often been suffering much pain—a state which I imagine you know by experience to heighten all real anxieties, and usually to create unreal.

It cheers me to be told by you that you think the volume interesting. In reading the MS. again and again I had got into a state of tremor about it which deprived me of judgment—just as if it were writing of my own, which I could not trust myself to pronounce upon.

I hope that your own health, and Mrs. Sully's too, will have been benefited by your change from south to north.

I think that I am really getting better, and shall have to stay among the minority in this world a little longer than I had expected.

Will you send me word how long you shall be at liberty, and whether you would think it worth while to come down to me one morning and stay till the afternoon of the following day? Your letter is delightful to me. Several spiritual kisses for it.

Thank you for your sweet affection. I have had rather a trying illness, which lasted, without great relief, for nearly eight weeks. But I hope that I am now out of it—that is, so far established that I may go on without a relapse. The cold weather was against me, as it was and is against much more important matters. The days of warmth and sunlight which have now and then blessed us have been my best medicine, though I acknowledge the benefit of pepsin and steel, and many other drugs. The gray skies and recurring rain are peculiarly dispiriting to me, and one seems to feel their influence all the more for the wide, beautiful view of field and hill which they sadden and half conceal. In town one thinks less of the sky.

If you are ever writing to our dear Mrs. William Smith do give my love to her, and tell her I am very grateful to her for the letter she wrote me with the postmark Ventnor upon it. With her usual delicacy of feeling she did not send her address, so that I could not write in return.

I am much obliged to you for writing me your letter of pleasant news.

It is wonderful how "Theophrastus" goes on selling in these bad times, and I have only to hope in addition that the buyers will be the better for it. Apparently we shall get through this last edition before Christmas, and then perhaps you will think of adding the volume to the Cabinet Edition. I am especially rejoiced to hear that your uncle is better again, and I trust that Strathtyrum is sharing our sunshine, which will be the best cure for him as for me. I am getting strong, and also am gaining flesh on my moderate scale. It really makes a difference to one's spirits to think that the harvest may now possibly be got in without utter ruin to the produce and unhappy producers. But this year will certainly prove a serious epoch, and initiate many changes in relation to farming. I fear, from what I have read, that the rich Lothians will have to be called compassionately the poor Lothians. By the way, if you happen to want any translation done from the French, and have not just the right person to do it, I think I can recommend a Miss Bradley Jenkins, of 50 Cornwall Road, Wesbourne Park, as one who has an unusually competent knowledge of French. We sat side by side on the same form translating Miss Edgeworth into French when we were girls.

I have not seen her for many years, but I know that she has been engaged in a high order of teaching, and I have lately heard from her that she is anxious to get work of the kind in question. She already spoke French well when we were pupils together, and she has since been an unintermitting student.

I wonder, talking of translators, how the young Mr. Ferrier is going on, who translated Kaufmann's pamphlet on "Deronda." What Mr. Blackwood told me of him interested me about his future.

Oblige us all by not falling into another accident when the next hunting season comes.

Before I received your letter the other day I was intending to write to you to ask whether, now that I am stronger and the fine weather shows some signs of permanence, you feel any revival of the inclination to come and see me for a couple of days. I hardly like to propose your taking the journey, now that you are not being brought near me by other visits—for the railway from you to us is, I think, rather tiresome. But if your inclination really lies towards coming you will be affectionately welcomed.

About the sea-side I am hopeless. The latter part of October is likely to be too cold for me to move about without risk of chills; and I hope to be back in town before the end of the month. I am not very fond of the sea-side, and this year it is likely to be crowded with people who have been hindered by the bad weather from going earlier. I prefer the Surrey hills and the security from draughts in one's own home. The one attraction of a coast place to me is a great breadth of sand to pace on when it is in its fresh firmness after the fall of the tide. But the sea itself is melancholy to me, only a little less so under warm sunlight, with plenty of fishing-smacks changing their shadows. All this is to let you know why I do not yield to the attraction of being with you, where we could chat as much or as little as we liked. I feel very much your affectionateness in wishing to have me near you.

Write me word soon whether you feel able to come as far as this for my sake.

I have read the article[38] with very grateful feelings. I think that he would himself have regarded it as a generally just estimate. And I am much obliged to you for sending it to me in proof.

Your selection of subjects for remark, and the remarks themselves, are in accordance with my feeling to a comforting extent; and I shall always remain your debtor for writing the article.

I trust you will not be forced to omit anything about his scientific and philosophical work, because that is the part of his life's labor which he most valued.

Perhaps you a little underrate the (original) effect of his "Life of Goethe in Germany." It was received with enthusiasm, and an immense number of copies, in both the English and German form, have been sold in Germany since its appearance in 1854.

I wish you were allowed to put your name to the article.

I am getting strong now after a long spell of medical discipline. All these long months I have been occupied with my husband's manuscripts: also with the foundation of a Physiological Studentship, which is my monument to his memory, and which is now all settled, as you may perhaps have seen by advertisements.[39] But I am not yet through the proof-reading of the final volume of "Problems of Life and Mind," which will contain the last sheets he ever wrote.

I hear very good accounts of Madame Bodichon, who is coming to me for a couple of days on the 29th.

You are wonderful for life and energy, in spite of your delicate looks. May you have all the strength you need for your sympathetic tasks!

I have not yet thanked you—and I do so now very gratefully—for the help you have given me in my sad and anxious task. Your eyes have been a most precious aid, not only as a matter of fact, but as a ground of confidence. For I am not at all a good proof-reader, and have a thorough distrust of myself.

I cannot wish not to have been cheered by your triple letter, even though I have caused you to rise earlier in the morning, and to feel a disproportionate remorse. "Maggior difetto men vergogna lava," as says Virgil to the blushing Dante. And you have given me the fuller measure because I had to wait a little.

Your legend of "Fair Women" interests me very much. I feel a citizen of the world again, knowing all the news. But the core of good news in your letter is that your husband is well again, and again happy in his work. Your collapse is what I feared for you; and you must call the getting change of air and scene—I was going to say "a duty," but are you one of those wonderful beings who find everything easier under that name? But at least one prefers doing a hard duty to grimacing with a pretence of pleasure in things that are no pleasure.

I am greatly comforted this morning by the fact that the (apparently) right man is found for the George Henry Lewes Studentship—an ardent worker, who could not have carried on his pursuit without this help. I know you are not unmindful of what touches me deeply.

Go on your visit, dear, and come back well—then show yourself without unnecessary delay to your loving friend.

I have had a delightful bit of news from Dr. Foster this morning. He had mentioned to me before that there was an Edinburgh student whom he had in his mind as the right one to elect. This morning he writes: "The trustees meet to-morrow to receive my nomination. I have chosen Dr. Charles Roy, an Edinburgh man, and Scotchman—not one of my own pupils. He is, I think, the most promising—by far the most promising—of our young physiologists, putting aside those who do not need the pecuniary assistance of the studentship. And the help comes to him just when it is most needed—he is in full swing of work, and was casting about for some means of supporting himself which would least interfere with his work, when I called his attention to the studentship. I feel myself very gratified that I can, at the very outset, recommend just the man, as it appears to me, for the post."

This is a thing your father would have chosen as a result of his life.

I have just had some news that grieves me. Mr. Blackwood is dangerously ill, and I fear, from Mr. William's letter, that there is little hope of recovery. He will be a heavy loss to me. He has been bound up with what I most cared for in my life for more than twenty years; and his good qualities have made many things easy to me that, without him, would often have been difficult.[40]

I wrote to Mr. Trübner to tell him that the printing of the "Problems" being finished, I should be glad if he would arrange with you about the conditions of publication. Bear in mind your father's wish that the volumes should not be made dearer than necessary.

I am going to Weybridge on Friday, and I intend to be at the Priory by Saturday before dusk. But it is just possible I may be detained till Monday morning. So if you have any good occupation for Sunday you had better call on your way home on Monday.

Your affectionate note would quite have determined me to do what, when your brother kindly proposed it, raised a certain longing in me. I thought that I should like to see you all in the remembered home again. But I have had a little check in health, and I am feeling so depressed that I shrink from making any engagement which involves others.

A visitor to-day and my own languor threatens to throw me backward in my arrangements for leaving, and I have a sense of impossibility about everything that, under other conditions, would be a pleasure. I am afraid lest a fit of sadness should make me an oppression to you all; and my conclusion this morning is that I must give up the few hours' happiness of feeling your family love around me as I used to do, and simply go straight up to town with my servants.

But if Friday morning brings me better hopes I will telegraph to you, since you allow me to wait till the eleventh hour. If you receive no telegram you will understand that I am still too downhearted to venture on a visit even to those who are among the best-loved of my friends. In that case you must all make me amends for my loss by coming to see me in the old place in town.

Came to Weybridge on 31st October, and returned to the Priory on 1st November.

I came here just a week ago, and I had a superstition that you would come to me yesterday. But I used no enchantments—and so you didn't come.

I am very grateful to you for your kind letter. News about you all had been much desired by me; but I have now so many business letters to write that I am apt to defer such as are not absolutely necessary. The careful index is a sign of your effective industry, and I have no doubt that it will be a great help to yourself as well as to your readers. One very often needs an index to one's own writing. My chief objects are quite completed now. The Dr. Roy appointed to the studentship is held by competent persons to be the most hopeful of our young physiologists: and there is a volume of 501 pages (the last) of "Problems of Life and Mind" ready to appear next month. I am quite recovered from the ailment which made me good for little in the summer, and indeed am stronger than I ever expected to be again. People are very good to me, and I am exceptionally blessed in many ways; but more blessed are the dead who rest from their labors, and have not to dread a barren, useless survival.

I am very well, dear kind friend, all things considered. One cannot help getting occasional chills and headaches in this hard, wintry time.

Oh, yes, I read the Times with great interest, and am much concerned to know what my contemporaries are doing. My time is very fully occupied, for I have now to write a great many letters, such as used to be written for me, and I would willingly spend the time thus taken up in another sort of reading and writing.

Thank you a thousand times, my dear friend, for your tender New Year's greeting and inquiries. I have passed well from "under the saws and harrows" of the severe cold, and am better, both in apparent organic soundness and in strength for all occupation, than I once thought was possible for me.

Our dear Barbara is painting in water colors again from her window—just as of old. I know you will be glad to hear of this. And I am now seeing many other friends, who interest me and bring me reports of their several worlds. The great public calamities of the past year have helped to quiet one's murmuring spirit in relation to private sorrows, and the prospect for the future is not yet very bright. One thinks of mothers like Mrs. Ruck, whose best-loved sons are in Afghanistan. But we must live as much as we can for human joy, dwelling on sorrow and pain only so far as the consciousness of it may help us in striving to remedy them.

Life has seemed worse without my glimpses of you. And now I have not the amends of thinking that you are out of our Egyptian darkness and getting health in the country. I must drive over to ask about you as soon as I can.

As the year went on, George Eliot began to see all her old friends again. But her life was nevertheless a life of heart-loneliness. Accustomed as she had been for so many years to solitude à deux, the want of close companionship continued to be very bitterly felt. She was in the habit of going with me very frequently to the National Gallery, and to other exhibitions of pictures, to the British Museum sculptures, and to South Kensington. This constant association engrossed me completely, and was a new interest to her. A bond of mutual dependence had been formed between us. On the 28th March she came down to Weybridge and stayed till the 30th; and on the 9th April it was finally decided that our marriage should take place as soon, and as privately, as might be found practicable.

You can hardly think how sweet the name sister is to me, that I have not been called by for so many, many years.

Without your tenderness I do not believe it would have been possible for me to accept this wonderful renewal of my life. Nothing less than the prospect of being loved and welcomed by you all could have sustained me. But now I cherish the thought that the family life will be the richer and not the poorer through your brother's great gift of love to me.

Yet I quail a little in facing what has to be gone through—the hurting of many whom I care for. You are doing everything you can to help me, and I am full of gratitude to you all for his sake as well as my own. The springs of affection are reopened in me, and it will make me better to be among you—more loving and trustful.

I valued Florence's little visit very much. You and she will come again—will you not?—to your sister.

I have found the spot in "The Prelude" where the passage I mentioned occurs. It is in book viii., "The Retrospect," towards the end:

The bit of brickwork in the rock is

"With aid derived from evidence."

I think you would find much to suit your purpose in "The Prelude," such as—

Except for travelling, and for popular distribution, I prefer Moxon's one-volumed edition of Wordsworth to any selection. No selection gives you the perfect gems to be found in single lines, or in half a dozen lines which are to be found in the "dull" poems.

I am sorry Matthew Arnold has not included the sonnet beginning—

and which has these precious lines,

Has he the magnificent sonnet on Toussaint l'Ouverture? I don't know where there is anything finer than the last eight lines of it.

Please don't acknowledge this note, else you will neutralize my pleasure in sending it by making me feel that I have given you trouble.

The beautiful photograph has reached me safely, and I am very grateful to you for your kindness in sending it to me. In comparing it with the photograph which you gave me seven or eight years ago I see the effect of a saddening experience which the years must bring to us all, but, to my feeling, the face is the more endearing because of that effect.

You have been very often in my thoughts, because I have associated you with public affairs, and have imagined sympathetically how they must have affected your private life. I am sure that this momentous experience in India has been a hard discipline both for you and for Lord Lytton. I can imagine he has often been sick at heart with the near vision, which his post forces on him, of human meanness and rancor. You, too, must have gathered some melancholy knowledge of that sort, which has perhaps changed a little the curves of the mouth and the glance of the eyes since those Vienna days, when the delightful M. de Villers helped to make the hours pleasant to us.

I saw the photographs of your daughters, which gave me an idea how fast the dramatic authoress has developed physically as well as mentally. When I first saw her at Vienna she was the prettiest little rosebud.

Mrs. Strachey called the other day when I was out, and among other reasons for my being sorry not to have seen her, was the having missed some authentic news about your probable movements. What happens to you will always have interest for me, since I have long been, with sincere regard, yours most truly.

On the 24th April George Eliot came down to Weybridge, and stayed till the 26th.

I am deeply obliged to you for the care with which you have treated the final volume of "The Problems" in the Academy, which you have kindly sent me. I think you could hardly have written more effectively towards exciting an interest in the work in the minds of the comparatively few who really care for the study of psychology. You have added one more to the obligations which will make me always yours gratefully.

I have something to tell you which will doubtless be a great surprise to you; but since I have found that other friends, less acquainted with me and my life than you are, have given me their sympathy, I think that I can count on yours. I am going to do what not very long ago I should myself have pronounced impossible for me, and therefore I should not wonder at any one else who found my action incomprehensible. By the time you receive this letter I shall (so far as the future can be matter of assertion) have been married to Mr. J. W. Cross, who, you know, is a friend of years, a friend much loved and trusted by Mr. Lewes, and who, now that I am alone, sees his happiness in the dedication of his life to me. This change in my position will make no change in my care for Mr. Lewes's family, and in the ultimate disposition of my property. Mr. Cross has a sufficient fortune of his own. We are going abroad for a few months, and I shall not return to live at this house. Mr. Cross has taken the lease of a house, No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where we shall spend the winter and early spring, making Witley our summer home.

I indulge the hope that you will some day look at the river from the windows of our Chelsea house, which is rather quaint and picturesque.

Please tell Bessie[41] for me, with my love to her. I cannot write to more than two or three persons.

A great, momentous change is going to take place in my life. My indisposition last week and several other subsequent circumstances have hindered me from communicating it to you, and the time has been but short since the decision was come to. But with your permission Charles will call on you and tell you what he can on Saturday.

Yours and Emily's ever, with unchanging love.

May 6.—Married this day at 10.15 to John Walter Cross, at St. George's, Hanover Square. Present, Charles, who gave me away, Mr. and Mrs. Druce, Mr. Hall, William, Mary, Eleanor, and Florence Cross. We went back to the Priory, where we signed our wills. Then we started for Dover and arrived there a little after five o'clock.

Your letter was a sweet greeting to us on our arrival here yesterday.

We had a millennial cabin on the deck of the Calais-Douvres, and floated over the strait as easily as the saints float upward to heaven (in the pictures). At Amiens we were very comfortably housed, and paid two enraptured visits, evening and morning, to the cathedral. I was delighted with J.'s delight in it. And we read our dear old cantos of the "Inferno" that we were reading a year ago, declining afterwards on "Eugénie Grandet." The nice woman who waited on us made herself very memorable to me by her sketch of her own life. She went to England when she was nineteen as a lady's maid—had been much ennuyée de sa mère, detested les plaisirs, liked only her regular every-day work and la paix.

Here we have a very fair appartement, and plenty of sunlight, au premier. Before dinner we walked up to the Arc de l'Étoile and back again, enjoying the lovely greenth and blossoms of the horse-chestnuts, which are in their first glory, innocent of dust or of one withered petal. This morning at twelve o'clock we are going to the Russian church, where J. has never been, and where I hope we shall hear the wonderful intoning and singing as I heard it years ago.

This is the chronicle of our happy married life, three days long—all its happiness conscious of a dear background in those who are loving us at Weybridge, at Thornhill, and at Ranby.

You are all inwoven into the pattern of my thoughts, which would have a sad lack without you. I like to go over again in imagination all the scene in the church and in the vestry, and to feel every loving look from the eyes of those who were rejoicing for us. Besides Professor Sellar's letter, which touched J. with grateful surprise, we have had one to him from Mr. Frederic Harrison, saying everything affectionate, and two very finely felt letters from Edith Simcox—one to him enclosing the one to me. Certainly, she has a rare generosity and elevation which find their easy channel in writing. My love to Henry and to the gentle Berthe,[42] who was an invisible presence at our wedding.

I think I must thank Florence, too, for her letter to J.; for we accept to the full the principle of "what is mine is thine" on each side. What most comforted him this morning was a letter from Albert Druce about the Chelsea house. His usual exclamation over anything from Albert is that his brother-in-law is the most satisfactory of men!

Write us word about everything, and consider yourselves all very much loved and spiritually petted by your loving sister.

This place is so magnificently situated, in a smiling valley, with the Isère flowing through it, and surrounded by grand and various lines of mountains, and we were so enraptured by our expedition yesterday to the Grande Chartreuse that we congratulate ourselves greatly on our choice of route. I think it unlikely that we shall want to wander beyond the second week in July. We shall begin to long for home just when the rest of the London world are longing for travel. We are seeing nature in her happiest moment now—the foliage on all the tremendous heights, the soft slopes, and the richly clad valleys on the way to the Chartreuse is all fresh and tender, shone through by a sunlight which cherishes and does not burn us. I had but one regret in seeing the sublime beauty of the Grande Chartreuse. It was that the Pater had not seen it. I would still give up my own life willingly if he could have the happiness instead of me. But marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently, I think I should have become very selfish. To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure.

Glorious weather always, and I am very well—quite amazingly able to go through fatigue.

Our life since we wrote to you has been a chapter of delights—Grenoble—Grande Chartreuse—Chambéry—paradisiacal walk to Les Charmettes—roses gathered in Jean Jacques' garden—Mont Cenis Tunnel and emergence into Italian sunshine. Milan, comfortable appartement, delicious privacy, and great minds condescending to relax themselves! We got here yesterday, and of course our first walk was to the post, where we found your delightful budget and other letters, which we took to a café in the grand galleria and read at our ease to the accompaniment of tea.

Two of my letters yesterday touched me very gratefully. One was from "Brother Jimmy"—the prettiest letter possible. The other letter that moved me was one from my own brother. Then J. had a graceful letter of congratulation from Mr. Henry James, who is still at Florence. I think you did not send that letter of Mr. Edmund Gurney's which you mention. I am fond of seeing the letters which put my friends in an amiable light for my imagination. And now that I have had that charming letter from my new brother in America, I feel that my family initiation is complete. No woman was ever more sweetly received by brothers and sisters than I have been; and it is a happy, new longing in my life that I may return into their bosoms some of the gladness they have poured into mine.

I have been uninterruptedly well, and feel quite strong with all sorts of strength except strong-mindedness. We are going to hear the music in the Duomo at eleven, and after that we intend to pay our first visit to the Brera gallery. It is our present plan to stay here for some days, and we enjoy the thought of a little stationary life such as we have not had since we left Paris. We often talk of our sisters, oftener think of them. You are our children, you know.

Your letter was forwarded to me here, and it was a great joy to me to have your kind words of sympathy, for our long silence has never broken the affection for you which began when we were little ones. My husband, too, was much pleased to read your letter. I have known his family for eleven years, and they have received me among them very lovingly. The only point to be regretted in our marriage is that I am much older than he; but his affection has made him choose this lot of caring for me rather than any other of the various lots open to him.

Emily Clarke has lately sent me rather a sad account of Sarah's[43] health. I trust that it is now better, for I think it is her lungs that chiefly trouble her, and summer may act beneficently on them. Please give my love to her, and tell her that I like the assurance of her share in the good wishes you send me.

I have often heard of Frederick[44] through the admiration of those who have heard him preach; and it has been a happy thought to me that you and Sarah must feel it a great comfort to have him as well as Walter settled near you.

Edith is the only one of your children whom I have seen since they have been grown up, and I thought her a noble-looking woman.

We are going to remain abroad until some time in July, and shall then return to the Heights, Witley, Surrey. Our home in London will be 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, looking on a very picturesque bit of the river.

I hope that your own health is quite good now, and that you are able to enjoy the active life which I know you are fond of. Always your affectionate sister.

Many thanks for your delightful letter, which came to me yesterday, with a loving though brief letter from Mrs. Congreve to keep it company in making the day agreeable.

We arrived here on Monday, and have been induced by a nice quiet apartment and pleasant attendance to carry out our plan of resting here and deliberately seeing what is to be seen in this cheerful, prosperous city. I am glad to find that the Luini pictures come up to my remembrance, and that J. is much impressed by his introduction to them. I continue remarkably well, and am every day surprising myself by the amount of walking, standing, and looking that I can go through. To-morrow or the next day we intend to go on to Verona, then, after a sufficient pause to enjoy that glorious place, we shall move on to Padua and Venice, where it will be best for you to send anything you may have to send. I like to see the letters. They make one realize the fact of one's home and little world there amid the dreaminess of foreign travel. We take our meals in our own apartment and see nothing of our fellow-guests in the hotel—only hear their British and American voices when they air themselves in the cortile after their dinner.

The weather has hitherto been delicious, not excessively warm, always with a pleasant movement in the air; but this morning there is a decided advance in heat, and we shall both have our theory of great heat being the best thing for us well tested in the next month.

The change I make in the date of this letter is a sign of the difficulty you well know that one finds in writing all the letters one wants to write while travelling. Ever since Charles forwarded to me your dear letter while I was in Paris I have been meaning to write to you. That letter was doubly sweet to me because it was written before you received mine, intended to inform you of my marriage before it appeared in the newspapers. Charles says that my friends are chiefly hurt because I did not tell them of the approaching change in my life. But I really did not finally, absolutely, decide—I was in a state of doubt and struggle—until only a fortnight before the event took place, so that at last everything was done in the utmost haste. However, there were four or five friends, of whom you were one, to whom I was resolved to write, so that they should at least get my letter on the morning of the 6th.

I had more than once said to Mr. Cross that you were that one of my friends who required the least explanation on the subject—who would spontaneously understand our marriage. But Charles sends me word that my friends in general are very sympathetic, and I should like to mention to you that Bessie[45] is one whose very kind words he has sent to me, for you may have an opportunity of giving my love to her, and telling her that it is very sweet to me to feel that her affection is constant to me in this as it was in other crises of my life. I wish, since you can no longer come in and out among us as you used to do, that you already knew my husband better. His family welcome me with the uttermost tenderness. All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my share, after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, so to speak, my coffin was ready for me in the next room. Deep down below there is a hidden river of sadness, but this must always be with those who have lived long—and I am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet.

We leave Verona to-day, and stay a little at Padua on our way to Venice. Hitherto we have had delightful weather, and just the temperature we rejoice in. We are both fond of warmth, and could bear more heat than we have the prospect of at present.

Yesterday we had a drive on the skirting heights of Verona, and saw the vast fertile plain around, with the Euganean hills, blue in the distance, and the Apennines just dimly visible on the clear margin of the horizon. I am always made happier by seeing well-cultivated land.

We came into Italy by way of Grenoble (seeing the Grande Chartreuse), Chambéry, and the Mont Cenis Tunnel; since then we have been staying at Milan and enjoying the Luini frescoes and a few other great things there. The great things are always by comparison few, and there is much everywhere one would like to help seeing, after it has once served to give one a notion of historical progression.

We shall stay at Venice for ten days or a fortnight; so if you have a scribe, or would write yourself, to tell me that all is going on well with you, the letter would not, as the Scotch say, "go amissing."