and has been ever since I can
remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the
Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees
in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all
the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the
Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind--to now
when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which
has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the
affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable--and other people
being destitute of the sixth sense to comprehend it--so that one feels
a fool either way)--one rarely finds any one to whom one can
comfortably speak of it, and be _understanded_ of them. It is the one
of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever
since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) _see_ those
things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a
particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you
should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a
small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me
_content_ in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read
your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and
an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small
sunny nook where we may end our days--so long as there is a bit of
yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...

[_Grenoside._] February 21, 1880.

* * * * *

I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the _Lay of
the Last Minstrel_. There are lovely bits in it.

Reading away at Mrs. Browning lately has very much confirmed my notion
that the fault of her things is lack of condensation. They are almost
without exception too long. I doubt if one should ever leave less than
fifty per cent. of a situation to one's readers' own imagination, if
one aims at the highest class of readers. That swan song to Camoeens
from his dying lady would have been very perfect in FIVE
verses. As it is, one gets tired even of the exquisite refrain
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" (an expression he had used about her
eyes in a song, and which haunts her).

The other night we had Sergeant Dickinson up. He has lately settled in
the village. He was in the Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava (17th