The country looks lovely, but for the smoke.  If it had but our blue distance it would be grand.  But the

                  “wreathed smoke afar
    That o’er the town like mist upraised
    Hung, hiding sun and star,”

gets worse every year!  And when I think of our lovely blue and grey folds of distance, and bright skies, and tints, I feel quite Ruskinish towards mills and manufactories.

TO C.T.  GATTY.

X Lines, South Camp, Aldershot. August 10, 1873.

MY VERY DEAR OLD CHARLIE,

Don’t you suppose your sister is forgetting you.  Two causes have delayed your drawings.

1.  I have been working—­oh so hard!  It was because Mr. Bell announced that he wanted a “volume,” and that for the Xmas Market one must begin at once in July!

Such is competition!

He had an idea that something which had not appeared in any magazine would be more successful than reprints. So I have written “Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, or the Luck of Lingborough,” and you will recognize your Cockie in it!  I have taken no end of pains with it, and it has been a matter of seven or eight hours a day lately.  I mean the last few days.  Rather too much.  It knocked me off my sleep, and reduced “my poor back” to the consistency of pith.  But I am picking up, partly by such gross material aid as bottled stout affords! and any amount of fresh air blowing in full draughts over my bed at night!!

2.  I have been at work for you, but I get so horribly dissatisfied with my things.  No; I must do some real steady work at it.  One can’t jump with a little “nice feeling” and plenty of theories into what can give any lasting pleasure to oneself or any one else.  I will send you shortly (I hope) a copy of one of Sir Hope Grant’s Chinnerys, and perhaps a wee thing of Ecclesfield.  The worst of drawing is, it wants mind as well as hands.  One can’t go at it jaded from head work, as one could “sew a long white seam” or any mechanical thing!...

When D——­ was with me, we went to a fete in the North Camp Gardens, and I was talking to Lady Grant about the Chinnerys, and the “happy thought” struck her to introduce me to a Mr. Walkinshaw.  They live somewhere in this country, and Mrs. Walkinshaw came up afterwards to ask if she might call on me, as they have a Chinnery collection (gathered in China), and Mr. Walkinshaw would show them to me!...  I mean to collect all possible information on the subject, and either to write myself, or prime you to write an article on him some day!

TO C.T.  GATTY.

X Lines. August 20, 1873.

DEAR OLD BOY,