tly from curiosity and
partly for the history. The French would have been very glad to find
it an epic worthy of the name, for they have n't one. Voltaire frankly
confesses that the French have not a genius for great poetry,--too much
in love, he says, with exactness and elegance.

I have--read--through--"Very Hard Cash;" and very hard it is to read.
Reade has some pretty remarkable powers,--powers of description and of
characterization; but the moment he touches the social relations, and
should be dramatic, he is struck with total incapacity. Indeed, what one
novelist has been perfect in dialogue, making each person say just what
he should and nothing else, but glorious Sir Walter?

To the Same.

SHEFFIELD, Sept. 20, 1867.

DEAR MARY,--"Live and learn." Next time, if it ever come, I shall put
up peaches in a little box by themselves. But the fact is, peaches can't
travel, unless they are plucked so early as nearly to spoil them of all
their "deliciarunz,"--which we are enjoying in those we eat here. And
Bryant with us,--fruity fellow that he is!--I am glad we have some good
fruit to give him. Yesterday we had a very good cantelope, and pears are
on hand all the while. I am sorry that I could not get the pears to you
just in eating condition, and the Hurlbut apples too; but they'll all
come right.

Yes, fruity,--that 's what Bryant is; but rather of the quality of dried
fruits,--not juicy, still less gushing, but [299] with a good deal of
concentrated essence in him (rather "frosty, but kindly "), exuding
often in little bits of poetical quotations, fitly brought in from
everywhere, and of which there seems to be no end in his memory.

The woods are beginning to show lovely bits of color, but the great
burden of leaves remains untouched. Bryant and I walked out to the Pine
Grove, and on to Sugar-Maple Hill. Your mother admires him for his much
walking; but I insist that he is possessed and driven about by a demon.
. . . By the bye, just keep that "article" for me; I have no other
copy. Bryant commended it, and said he thought the argument against the
Incomprehensible's being totally unintelligible, was new.

To his Daughter, Mrs. C.

ST. DAVID'S, July 22, 1868.

DEAR KATE,--I am going to have no more to do with the weather. You need
n't expostulate with me. It 's no use talking. My mind is made up.
You may tell M. so. It will be hardest for her to believe it. She has
partaken with me in that infirmity of nobl