fair to the party,—­
  Not quite right.  I declare, I really am almost offended: 
  I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a title to be so. 
  Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly
  Wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness.  But, oh, my
  Pen will not write any more;—­let us say nothing further about it.

* * * * *

Yes, my dear Miss Roper, I certainly called him repulsive;
So I think him, but cannot be sure I have used the expression
Quite as your pupil should; yet he does most truly repel me. 
Was it to you I made use of the word? or who was it told you? 
Yes, repulsive; observe, it is but when he talks of ideas,
That he is quite unaffected, and free, and expansive, and easy;
I could pronounce him simply a cold intellectual being.—­
When does he make advances?—­He thinks that women should woo him;
Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. 
She that should love him must look for small love in return,—­like

          the ivy

On the stone wall, must expect but rigid and niggard support, and
Even to get that must go searching all round with her humble embraces.

  II.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—­from Rome.

  Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the
       furrow,
  Did it not truly accept as its summum et ultimum bonum
  That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in? 
  Would it have force to develope and open its young cotyledons,
  Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another? 
  Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions,
  Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence? 
    While from Marseilles in the steamer we voyaged to Civita Vecchia,
  Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba,
  Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving poop of the vessel,
  Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows,
  “This is Nature,” I said:  “we are born as it were from her waters,
  Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for,
  Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge,
  Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed.” 
  This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the
       steamer;
  And as unthinking I sat in the ball of the famed Ariadne,
  Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble. 
  It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer. 
  Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

  III.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.