ging in the
Ivy that hangs on those old Priory walls. A month ago I wrote to ask
Carlyle's Niece about her Uncle, and telling her of this Priory, and how
her Uncle would once have called me Dilettante; all which she read him;
he only said 'Poor, Poor old Priory!' She says he is very well, and
abusing V. Hugo's 'Miserables.' I have been reading his Cromwell, and
not abusing it. You tell all the Truth about him.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 28/77.

MY DEAR SIR ('_Norton_' I will write in my next if you will anticipate me
by a reciprocal Familiarity).

I wish I had some English Life, Woodbridge, or other, to send you: but
Woodbridge, I sometimes say, is as Pompeii, in that respect; and I know
little of the World beyond but what a stray Newspaper tells me. So I
must get back to my Friends on the Shelf.

Thence I lately took down Mr. Lowell's (I have proposed to _un-mister_
him too), Lowell's Essays, and carried them with me to that old Dunwich,
which I suppose I shall see no more this year. Robin Redbreast--have you
him?--was piping in the Ivy along the Walls; and, under them,
Blackberries ripening from stems which those old Grey Friars picked from.
And I had the Essays abroad, and within doors; and marked with a Query
some words, or sentences, which I stumbled at: which I should not have
stumbled at had all the rest not been such capital Reading. I really
believe I know not, on the whole, any such Essays, of that kind: and that
a very comprehensive kind, both in Subject, and Treatment. I think he
settles many Questions that every one discusses: and on which a Final
Verdict is what we now want. I believe the Books will endure: and that
is why I want a few blemishes, as I presume to think them, removed: and
the Author is to see my Pencil marks, when he returns to England, or to
her 'Gigantic Daughter of the West.' I hope he will live to write many
more such Books: Cervantes, first of all!

I have also been reading Carlyle's Cromwell: which I think will last
also, and so carry along with it many of his more perishable tirades. I
don't know indeed if his is the Final Verdict on Oliver: or on so many of
the subordinate Characters whom he sketches in so confidently. A shrewd
Man is he; but it is not so easy to judge of men by a few stray hints of
them in Books. A quaint instance of this Carlyle himself supplied me
with, in his total misapprehension of his hitherto unseen Correspondent
'Squire,