onder of course; but there must be something to
wonder at, for Henley has eyes and ears and an immortal soul of his own.

I shall send this off to-day to let you know of my new
address--Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. Salute the faithful
in my name. Salute Priscilla, salute Barnabas, salute Ebenezer--O no,
he's too much, I withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.--Ever
your faithful

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[_Edinburgh, May or June 1875._]

I say, we have a splendid picture here in Edinburgh. A Ruysdael of which
one can never tire: I think it is one of the best landscapes in the
world: a grey still day, a grey still river, a rough oak wood on one
shore, on the other chalky banks with very complicated footpaths, oak
woods, a field where a man stands reaping, church towers relieved
against the sky and a beautiful distance, neither blue nor green. It is
so still, the light is so cool and temperate, the river woos you to
bathe in it. O I like it!

I say, I wonder if our Scottish Academy's exhibition is going to be done
at all for Appleton or whether he does not care for it. It might amuse
me, although I am not fit for it. Why and O why doesn't Grove publish
me?--Ever yours,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

I was at this time, if I remember rightly, preparing some lectures on
Hogarth for a course at Cambridge.

[_Swanston, June 1875._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am a devil certainly; but write I cannot. Look here,
you had better get hold of G. C. Lichtenberg's _Ausfuerliche Erklarung
der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche_: Goettingen, 1794 to 1816 (it was
published in numbers seemingly). Douglas the publisher lent it to me:
and tho' I hate the damned tongue too cordially to do more than dip into
it, I have seen some shrewd things. If you cannot get it for yourself,
(it seems scarce), I dare say I could negotiate with Douglas for a loan.
This adorable spring has made me quite drunken, drunken with green
colour and golden sound. We have the best blackbird here that we have
had for years; we have two; but the other is but an average performer.
Anything so rich and clear as the pipe of our first fiddle, it never
entered into the heart of man to fancy. How the years slip away, Colvin;
and we walk little cycles, and turn in little abortive spirals, and come
out again, hot and weary, to find the same view before us, the same hill
barring the road. Onl