agile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do
it. D---- and he became great friends in London, and I think now he
would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak
our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over
second-rate "society" work for _Graphic_, etc., etc., when he has such
a genius to interpret humour and pathos for good writers, and no real
writing gifts himself. (He has done some things called _Flirtation in
France_, supplying both letter-press and sketches!--that are terrible
to any one who has gone heart and soul into his House that Jack
built!!!) I've told him frankly if he "_draws down to me_" in the
hopes of making _my_ share easy by making his commonplace, and gives
me a "rising young family in sand-boots and frilled trousers with an
over-fed mercantile mamma," my "few brains will utterly congeal," but
I have made two suggestions to _him_, so closely on his own lines that
if hints help him I think he would find it easy. You know _horses_ are
really his specialite. I have asked him to give me a coloured thing
and one or two rough sketches, Either

An Old Coaching Day's Idyll
or--A Trooper's Tragedy.

The same beginning for either:

Child learning to ride on
hobby-horse
rocking-horse
donkey
pony
etc. etc.

Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching
road (Hog's Back!)--a highwayman--a broken-down postilion--a girl on a
pillion, etc., etc.

Or, if military:

A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a
bridge.

A Horse and Trooper--Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another
man across his saddle.

Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet),
but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.

* * * * *

August 9, 1879.

* * * * *

I was reading again at _Robert Falconer_ the other day. What _grand_
bits there are in it? With such _bosh_ close by. So like Ruskin in
that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the
problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but
nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or
knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about
drunkards, extortione