changing and fading, people loving each other, smiling and crying, the multiplied phenomena of Nature, multiplied in fact and fancy, in Art and Science, in every way that a man’s intellect or education or imagination can be brought to bear.—­And who is to say that we are to ignore all this, or not value them and love them, because there is another unknown world yet to come?  Why, that unknown future world is but a manifestation of God Almighty’s Will, and a development of Nature, neither more nor less than this in which we are, and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts of His creation.  The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as much and no more God’s work, as the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this infinitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall read, please God, a letter from my kindest Lady and friend.  About my future state I don’t know; I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father—­but for to-day I thank God that I can love you, and that you yonder and others besides are thinking of me with a tender regard.  Hallelujah may be greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and countless ages of stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and I have a right to rejoice and believe in our little part and to trust in to-day as in to-morrow.  God bless my dear lady and her husband.  I hope you are asleep now, and I must go too, for the candles are just winking out.

Thursday.—­I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette in this morning’s papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to marry on nothing a year.  He worked in Galignani’s newspaper for ten francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with fortune.  William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and cheerful.  I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning, ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and getting ready to march too.  Well, ma’am, I have as good a right to presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ’s Christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism.  I wonder will He come again and tell it us?  We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our life.  I don’t want to blubber upon everybody’s shoulders; but to have a good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I shall not be ashamed to own to them....  It is near upon three o’clock, and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via London.  Why, if it doesn’t come in, you won’t get any letter to-morrow, no, nothing—­and I made so sure.  Well, I will try and go to work, it is only one more little drop.  God bless you, dear lady.