be too chary of the lower forms. To-day I sat down on a
tree-stump at the skirt of a little strip of planting, and thoughtlessly
began to dig out the touchwood with an end of twig. I found I had
carried ruin, death, and universal consternation into a little community
of ants; and this set me a-thinking of how close we are environed with
frail lives, so that we can do nothing without spreading havoc over all
manner of perishable homes and interests and affections; and so on to my
favourite mood of an holy terror for all action and all inaction
equally--a sort of shuddering revulsion from the necessary
responsibilities of life. We must not be too scrupulous of others, or we
shall die. Conscientiousness is a sort of moral opium; an excitant in
small doses, perhaps, but at bottom a strong narcotic.

_Saturday._--I have been two days in Edinburgh, and so had not the
occasion to write to you. Morley has accepted the _Fables_, and I have
seen it in proof, and think less of it than ever. However, of course, I
shall send you a copy of the magazine without fail, and you can be as
disappointed as you like, or the reverse if you can. I would willingly
recall it if I could.

Try, by way of change, Byron's _Mazeppa_; you will be astonished. It is
grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a passion, and
a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one's own
generation of better writers, and--I don't know what to say; I was going
to say "smaller men"; but that's not right; read it, and you will feel
what I cannot express. Don't be put out by the beginning; persevere, and
you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an end with it.

_Sunday._--The white mist has obliterated the hills and lies heavily
round the cottage, as though it were laying siege to it; the trees wave
their branches in the wind, with a solemn melancholy manner, like
people swaying themselves to and fro in pain. I am alone in the house,
all the world being gone to church; and even in here at the side of the
fire, the air clings about one like a wet blanket. Yet this morning,
when I was just awake, I had thought it was going to be a fine day.
First, a cock crew, loudly and beautifully and often; then followed a
long interval of silence and darkness, the grey morning began to get
into my room; and then from the other side of the garden, a blackbird
executed one long flourish, and in a moment as if a spring had been
touched or a sl