re,
and I will ask you to spare _St. Ives_ when it goes to you; it is a sort
of _Count Robert of Paris_. But I hope rather a _Dombey and Son_, to be
succeeded by _Our Mutual Friend_ and _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of
Two Cities_. No toil has been spared over the ungrateful canvas; and it
_will not_ come together, and I must live, and my family. Were it not
for my health, which made it impossible, I could not find it in my heart
to forgive myself that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade
when I was young, which might have now supported me during these ill
years. But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the
nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very little
dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, long lost,
improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have managed to please
the journalists. But I am a fictitious article and have long known it. I
am read by journalists, by my fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these,
_incipit et explicit_ my vogue. Good thing anyway! for it seems to have
sold the Edition. And I look forward confidently to an aftermath; I do
not think my health can be so hugely improved, without some subsequent
improvement in my brains. Though, of course, there is the possibility
that literature is a morbid secretion, and abhors health! I do not think
it is possible to have fewer illusions than I. I sometimes wish I had
more. They are amusing. But I cannot take myself seriously as an artist;
the limitations are so obvious. I did take myself seriously as a workman
of old, but my practice has fallen off. I am now an idler and cumberer
of the ground; it may be excused to me perhaps by twenty years of
industry and ill-health, which have taken the cream off the milk.

As I was writing this last sentence, I heard the strident rain drawing
near across the forest, and by the time I was come to the word "cream"
it burst upon my roof, and has since redoubled, and roared upon it. A
very welcome change. All smells of the good wet earth, sweetly, with a
kind of Highland touch; the crystal rods of the shower, as I look up,
have drawn their criss-cross over everything; and a gentle and very
welcome coolness comes up around me in little draughts, blessed
draughts, not chilling, only equalising the temperature. Now the rain
is off in this spot, but I hear it roaring still in the nigh
neighbourhood--and that moment, I was driven from the verandah by