eat deal better, but still have to take care.
I have got quite a lot of Victor Hugo done; and not I think so badly:
pitching into this work has straightened me up a good deal. It is the
devil's own weather but that is a trifle. I must know when Cornhill must
see it. I can send some of it in a week easily, but I still have to
read _The Laughing Man_,[13] and I mean to wait until I get to London
and have the loan of that from you. If I buy anything more this
production will not pay itself. The first part is not too well written,
though it has good stuff in it.

My people have made no objection to my going to Goettingen; but my body
has made I think very strong objections. And you know if it is cold
here, it must be colder there. It is a sore pity; that was a great
chance for me and it is gone. I know very well that between Galitzin and
this swell professor I should have become a good specialist in law and
how that would have changed and bettered all my work it is easy to see;
however I must just be content to live as I have begun, an ignorant,
_chic-y_ penny-a-liner. May the Lord have mercy on my soul!

Going home not very well is an astonishing good hold for me. I shall
simply be a prince.

Have you had any thought about Diana of the Ephesians? I will straighten
up a play for you, but it may take years. A play is a thing just like a
story, it begins to disengage itself and then unrolls gradually in
block. It will disengage itself some day for me and then I will send you
the nugget and you will see if you can make anything out of it.--Ever
yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

This and the following letters were written after Stevenson's return
to Scotland. The essay _Ordered South_ appeared in Macmillan's
Magazine at this date; that on Victor Hugo's romances in the Cornhill
a little later.

_[Swanston], May 1874, Monday._

We are now at Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. The garden is
but little clothed yet, for, you know, here we are six hundred feet
above the sea. It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning. Everything
wintry. I am very jolly, however, having finished Victor Hugo, and just
looking round to see what I should next take up. I have been reading
Roman Law and Calvin this morning.

_Evening._--I went up the hill a little this afternoon. The air was
invigorating, but it was so cold that my scalp was sore. With this high
wintry wind, and the grey s