w how they never perish,
How, in time of later art,
Memories consecrate and sweeten
These defaced and tempest-beaten
Flowers of former years we cherish,
Half a life, against our heart.

Most, those love-fruits withered greenly,
Those frail, sickly amourettes,
How they brighten with the distance
Take new strength and new existence
Till we see them sitting queenly
Crowned and courted by regrets!

All that loveliest and best is,
Aureole-fashion round their head,
They that looked in life but plainly,
How they stir our spirits vainly
When they come to us Alcestis-
like returning from the dead!

Not the old love but another,
Bright she comes at Memory's call
Our forgotten vows reviving
To a newer, livelier living,
As the dead child to the mother
Seems the fairest child of all.

Thus our Goethe, sacred master,
Travelling backward thro' his youth,
Surely wandered wrong in trying
To renew the old, undying
Loves that cling in memory faster
Than they ever lived in truth.

So; _en voila assez de mauvais vers._ Let us finish with a word or two
in honest prose, tho' indeed I shall so soon be back again and, if you
be in town as I hope, so soon get linked again down the Lothian road by
a cigar or two and a liquor, that it is perhaps scarce worth the postage
to send my letter on before me. I have just been long enough away to be
satisfied and even anxious to get home again and talk the matter over
with my friends. I shall have plenty to tell you; and principally plenty
that I do not care to write; and I daresay, you, too, will have a lot of
gossip. What about Ferrier? Is the L.J.R. think you to go naked and
unashamed this winter? He with his charming idiosyncrasy was in my eyes
the vine-leaf that preserved our self-respect. All the rest of us are
such shadows, compared to his full-flavoured personality; but I must not
spoil my own _debut_. I am trenching upon one of the essayettes which I
propose to introduce as a novelty this year before that august assembly.
For we must not let it die. It is a sickly baby, but what with nursing,
and pap, and the like, I do not see why it should not have a stout
manhood after all, and perhaps a green old age. Eh! when we are old (if
we ever should be) that too will be one of those cherished memories I
have been so rhapsodizing over. We must consecrate our room. We must