led,
and should _really_ like (what is seldom soothing!) a candid opinion
from _each of you_. You know how I think the riding _some_ hobbies
takes the _fine edge_ off the mind, and if you think I am growing
coarse in the cause of sanitation--I beseech you to tell me! As to
putting _the teaching_ into an essay--the crux there is that the
people one wants to stir up about sanitation are just good family folk
with no special literary bias; and they will read a tale when they
won't read an essay! But do tell me if any one of you feel that the
subject _grates_, or my way of putting it.

Now, my darling, I must tell you that I have got a telegram from my
goodman--the Kapellmeister!--to say he IS to be sent home in
"early spring." This is a great comfort. I would willingly have let
him stay two months longer to escape spring cold; but he has got to
_hate_ the place so fiercely, that I now long for him to get away at
any cost. It must be most depressing! The last _letter_ I got, he had
had a trip by sea, and said he felt perfectly different till he got
back to Colombo, when the oppression seized him again. He has been to
Trincomalee, and is charmed with it, and said he could read small
print when he got there, but his eyes quite fail in the muggyness of
Colombo. However he will cheer up now, I hope! and Nov. and Dec. and
Jan. are good months.

Now good-bye, dear. My best love to Aunty and Madre.

Your loving,
J.H.E.

TO A.E.

_Ecclesfield._ October 24, 1882.

... It was very vexatious that the Megha Duta came just too late for
last mail. It is a beautiful poem. Every now and then the local colour
has a weird charm all its own. It lifts one into another land (without
any jarring of railway or steamship!) to realize the _locale_ in which
rearing masses of grey cumuli suggest elephants rushing into combat!
And the husband's picture of his wife in his absence is as noble, as
sympathetic, and as perceptive as anything of the kind I ever read.
So full of human feeling and so refined. I enjoyed it very much. It
reminded me, oddly enough, more than once of Young's _Night Thoughts_.
I think perhaps (if the charm of another tongue, and the wonder of its
antiquity did not lead one to give both more _attention_ and more
_sympathy_ than one would perhaps bestow on an English poem) that the
poem does not rank much higher than a degree short of the first rank
of our poets. But it is very charming. And oh, what a lovely text! It