ou a better Book than any I can send you of my own: or of
any one else's in the way of Verse, I think: the Sonnets of Alfred
Tennyson's Brother Charles. Two thirds of them I do not care for: but
there is scarce one without some fine thought or expression: some of them
quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original. I think you in
America may like these leaves from the Life of a quiet Lincolnshire
Parson.

. . . We have had the Leaves green unusually late this year, I think: but
so I have thought often before, I am told. The last few nights have
brought Frost, however: and changed the countenance of all. A Blackbird
(have you him as the 'ousel'?) whom I kept alive, I think, through last
hard winter by a saucer of Bread and Milk, has come to look for it again.

_To Miss Anna Biddell_.

_Nov._ 30, 1880.

One day I went into the Abbey at 3.5 p.m. while a beautiful anthem was
beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful,
well intoned on one single note by the Minister. And when I looked up
and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to
have raised. The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of
them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I
remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and
Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni
floating everywhere about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several
Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother's Box on the
third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both. The Audience
all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also;
only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed;
Trebelli, her name. The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan:
excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the
whole.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

LITTLEGRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.
_Decr._ 15 [1880].

MY DEAR MASTER,

I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not
wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected
to enquire about you. I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five
minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on
behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were
still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here. I saw nobody in
London except my two Widow