February 19, 1880.

I have been re-reading the Legend of Montrose and the Heart of Midlothian with such delight, and poems of both the Brownings, and Ruskin, and The Woman in White, and Tom Brown’s Schooldays, etc., etc.!!!  I have got two volumes of The Modern Painters back with me to go at.

What a treat your letters are!  Bits are nearly as good as being there.  The sunset you saw with Miss C——­, and the shadowy groups of the masquers below in the increasing mists of evening, painted itself as a whole on to my brain—­in the way scenes of Walter Scott always did.  Like the farewell to the Pretender in Red Gauntlet, and the black feather on the quicksand in The Bride of Lammermuir.

March 1, 1880.

* * * * *

The ball must have been a grand sight, but I think, judging from the list, that your dress as Thomas the Rhymer stands out in marked individuality.  Nothing shows more how few people are at all original than the absence of any thing striking or quaint in most of the characters assumed at a Fancy Ball.  This, however, is Pampering the Pride of you members of the Mutual Admiration Society.  You must not become cliquish—­no not Ye Yourselves!!!!

Above all you must never lose that gracious quality (for which I have so often given you a prize) of patience and sympathy with small musicians and jangling pianos in the houses of kind and hospitable Philistines.  Besides, I like you to be largely gracious and popular.  All the same I confess that it is a grievance that music (and sherry!) are jointly regarded as necessary to be supplied by all hosts and hostesses—­whether they can give you them good or not!  People do not cram their bad drawings down your throats in similar fashion, Still what is, is—­and Man is more than Music—­and I have never felt the real mastership you hold in music more than when you have beaten a march out of some old tub for kindness’ sake with a little gracious bow at the end!  Don’t you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R——­ petted till he didn’t know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants.  And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!!  I have heard enough good playing to be able to gauge him!...

Incapacity for every other kind of effort is giving me leisure for a feast of reading and re-reading such as I have not indulged for years.  Amongst other things I have read for the first time Black’s Strange Adventures of a Phaeton—­it is very charming indeed, and if you haven’t read it, some time you should.  As a rule I detest German heroes to English books, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and the refrain outbreaks of his