I went to see Mrs. H. Ward the other day:  she insists on doing battle with the reviewer in the Quarterly, and is thinking of another novel, of which the subject will be the free-thinking of honest working-men in Paris and elsewhere.  People say that in “Robert Elsmere” Rose is intended for you, Catherine for your sister Laura, the Squire for Mark Pattison, the Provost for me, etc., and Mr. Grey for Professor Green.  All the portraits are about equally unlike the originals.

Good-bye, you have been sitting with me for nearly an hour, and now, like Laodamia or Protesilaus, you disappear.  I have been the better for your company.  One serious word:  May God bless you and help you in this and every other great hurt of life.

Ever yours,

B. Jowett.

I will publish all his letters to me together, as, however delightful letters may be, I find they bore me when they are scattered all through an autobiography.

March 11th, 1889.

My dear Margaret,

As you say, friendships grow dull if two persons do not care to write to one another.  I was beginning to think that you resented my censorious criticisms on your youthful life and happiness.

Can youth be serious without ceasing to be youth?  I think it may.  The desire to promote the happiness of others rather than your own may be always “breaking in.”  As my poor sister (of whom I will talk to you some day) would say:  “When others are happy, then I am happy.”  She used to commend the religion of Sydney Smith—­“Never to let a day pass without doing a kindness to some body”—­and I think that you understand something about this; or you would not be so popular and beloved.

You ask me what persons I have seen lately:  I doubt whether they would interest you.  Mr. Welldon, the Headmaster of Harrow, a very honest and able man with a long life before him, and if he is not too honest and open, not unlikely to be an Archbishop of Canterbury.  Mr. J. M. Wilson, Headmaster of Clifton College—­a very kind, genial and able man—­there is a great deal of him and in him—­not a man of good judgment, but very devoted—­a first-rate man in his way.  Then I have seen a good deal of Lord Rosebery—­ very able, shy, sensitive, ambitious, the last two qualities rather at war with each other—­very likely a future Prime Minister.  I like Lady Rosebery too—­very sensible and high-principled, not at all inclined to give up her Judaism to please the rest of the world.  They are rather overloaded with wealth and fine houses:  they are both very kind.  I also like Lady Leconfield [Footnote:  Lady Leconfield was a sister of Lord Rosebery’s and one of my dearest friends.], whom I saw at Mentone.  Then I paid a visit to Tennyson, who has had a lingering illness of six months, perhaps fatal, as he is eighty years of age.  It was pleasing to see how he takes it, very patient and without fear of death, unlike his former state of mind.  Though he is so sensitive, he seemed to me to bear his illness like a great man.  He has a volume of poems waiting to come out—­some of them as good as he ever wrote.  Was there ever an octogenarian poet before?