eling that I am
living with some capricious creature who frequently growls and may
possibly bite. Well, it won't be very long before I write again, and
by that time I shall probably know whether I am likely to find
any permanent billet here or not. I am so sorry to hear about Mrs.
Swanborough's indisposition. You know that I take the deepest interest
in everything that affects you. They tell me here that I am looking very
fit, though I think they ought to spell it with an "a."

VIII. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 6th April, 1882.

I am writing this, my dear Bertie, at a little table which has been
fitted up in the window of my bedroom. Every one in the house is asleep
except myself; and all the noise of the city is hushed. Yet my own brain
is singularly active, and I feel that I am better employed in sitting
up and writing to you, than in tossing about upon my bed. I am often
accused of being sleepy in the daytime, but every now and then Nature
gets level by making me abnormally wakeful at night.

Are you conscious of the restful influence which the stars exert? To me
they are the most soothing things in Nature. I am proud to say that I
don't know the name of one of them. The glamour and romance would pass
away from them if they were all classified and ticketed in one's brain.
But when a man is hot and flurried, and full of his own little ruffled
dignities and infinitesimal misfortunes, then a star bath is the finest
thing in the world. They are so big, and so serene and so lovely.
They tell me that the interplanetary spaces are full of the debris of
shattered asteroids; so, perhaps, even among them there are such things
as disease and death. Yet just to look at them must remind a man of what
a bacillus of a thing he is--the whole human race like some sprinkling
of impalpable powder upon the surface of one of the most insignificant
fly-wheels of a monstrous machine. But there's order in it, Bertie,
there's order! And where there is order there must be mind, and where
there is mind there must be sense of Justice. I don't allow that there
can be any doubt as to the existence of that central Mind, or as to the
possession by it of certain attributes. The stars help me to realise
these. It is strange, when one looks upon them, to think that the
Churches are still squabbling down here over such questions as whether
the Almighty is most gratified by our emptying a tea-spoonful of water
over our babies' heads, or by our wa