ty bits for sketching if it had been
sketching-weather....

I hope to get several things done in London. Jean Ingelow has burst
out rather about my writings, and wants me to do something "in the
style of Madam Liberality," and let her try to get it into _Good
Words_, as she thinks I ought to try for a wider audience. I shall
certainly go and see her, and talk over matters.... I was _very_ much
pleased Sir Anthony Home had been so much pleased with "Jan." To draw
tears from a V.C. and a fine old Scotch medico is very gratifying!
Capt. Patten said their own Dr. Craig had also been delighted with it.
When "We and the World" is done I mean to rest well on my oars, and
then try and aim at something to give me a better footing if I
can....

June 14, 1879.

... I am getting as devoted to Browning as you. It is very funny--this
sudden and simultaneous light on him!

May 23, 1879.

[_Sketch._]

Forty-four of these aquatic plant tubs stand in one part of the back
premises of Clyst S. George Rectory, full of truly wondrous varieties.
The above is a thing like white tassels and purple-pink buds. Fancy
how I revel in them, and in the garden, which holds 1640 species of
herbaceous perennials all labelled and indexed!! The old Rector (he is
89) is as hard at it as ever. He is so pleased to be listened to, and
it is enormously interesting though somewhat fatiguing, and leaves me
no time whatever for anything else! My brain whirls with tiles,
mosaics, tesserae, bell-castings, bell-marks, and mottos, electros,
squeezes, rubbings, etc., etc. His latest plant fad is Willows and
Bamboos, of which he has countless kinds growing and flourishing!!! He
is infirm, but it is very grand to see life rich with interests, and
with work that will benefit others--so near the grave!

We'd a funny scene this morning when I went over the church with him,
and had to write my name in the book.

Very testily--"The _date_, my dear, put the date!"

"I have put it."

More testily at being in the wrong--"Then put your address, put your
address."

I hesitated, and he threw up his hands: "Bless me! you've not got one.
It has always puzzled me so what made _you_ take a fancy to a
soldier."

He had been very full of all kinds of ancient Church matters--a
wonderful bell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in a very remarkable
inscription, etc.,--so I seized the pen and wrote--_Strada Maria
Stella, Malta_--and "I du thenk" (as they say here) it w