I won’t give to ye) before some three thousand listeners and the late Prince Consort; and there on the table was the head and antlers of a male reindeer—­beasts that, as I’m telling ye, I knew sentimately, and had killed at all seasons.  And this man, who, as I’m telling ye, was one of the verra furrrst men of the day (which is the reason why I’m not giving ye his name) spoke on, good and bad, and then he said, ’Ladies and gentlemen, and your Royal Highness, be good enough to look at the head of this Reindeer.  Here ye see the antlers,’ and so forth, ’and ye’ll obsairve that there’s a horn that has the shape of a shovel and protrudes over the beast’s eyes in a way that must be horribly inconvenient.  But when ye see its shape, ye’ll perceive one of the most beautiful designs of Providence, a proveesion as we may say; for this inconvenient horn is so shaped that with it the beast can shovel away the deep winter snow and find its accustomed food.’

“And when I heard this I just shook with laughing till a man I knew saw me, and asked what I was laughing at, and I said, ’Because I happen to know that the male reindeer sheds its antlers every year in the beginning of November, snow shovel and all, and does not resume them till spring.’"!!!!!!

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April 26, 1880.

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Curious your writing to me about Dante’s Hell—­and Lethe.  Two books in my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE as strongly in those who have been carefully brought up apart from “religious convictions” as in those whose minds have been soaked in them).  One was Flaxman’s Dante, the other Selous’s illustrations in the same style to the Pilgrim’s Progress.  I do not know whether I suffered more in my childhood than other children.  Possibly, as my head was a good deal too big for my body!  But I remember two troubles that haunted me.  One that I should get tired of Eternity.  Another that I couldn’t be happy in Heaven unless I could forget.  And in this latter connection I loved indescribably one of Flaxman’s best designs. [Sketch.] I can’t remember it well enough to draw decently, but this was the attitude of Dante whom Beatrice was just laving in the Waters of Forgetfulness before they entered Paradise.

And even more fond was I of the passing of the great river by Christiana and her children, and by that mixed company of the brave and the weak, the young and the old, the gentle and the impatient,—­and that grand touch by which the “Mr. Ready-to-Halt” of the long Pilgrimage crossed the waters of Death without fear or fainting.

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Why should you think I should differ with Dante in his estimate of sin?  I doubt if I could rearrange his Circles, except that “Lust” is a wide word, as = Passion I should probably leave it where it is; but there are hideous forms of it which are inextricably mingled, if not identical with Cruelty,—­and Cruelty I should put at the lowest round of all.