all the good
work done in those bygone days, (Donovan's own book being of
inestimable excellence in this kind,) they affect me with profound
melancholy in the thought of the loss to the entire body of the nation
of all this perfect artistic capacity, and sweet will, for want of
acknowledgment, system, and direction. I must write a careful passage
on this matter in my new Elements of Drawing. Your drawings have been
sent me not by you, but by my mistress Fors, for a text. It is no
wonder, when you can draw like this, that you care so much for all
lovely nature. But I shall be ashamed to show you my peacock's
feather; I've sent it, however.

* * * * *

It is _very_ sweet of you to give me your book, but I accept it at
once most thankfully. It is the best type I can show of the perfect
work of an English lady in her own simple peace of enjoyment and
natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty
things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too
cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks;
it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished
proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Saturday's
post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal
of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in
my Greek.

* * * * *

It is a great joy to me that _you_ like the Wordsworth bits; there are
worse coming; but I've been put into a dreadful passion by two of my
cleverest girl pupils "going off pious!" It's exactly like a nice pear
getting "sleepy;" and I'm pretty nearly in the worst temper I _can_ be
in, for W. W. But what _are_ these blessed feathers? Everything that's
best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. What incomparable little
creature wears such things, or lets fall! The "fringe of flame" is
Carlyle's, not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often
mistake one for the other now.

* * * * *

You cannot in the least tell what a help you are to me, in caring so
much for my things and seeing what I try to do in them. You are quite
one of a thousand for sympathy with everybody, and one of the ten
times ten thousand, for special sympathy with my own feelings and
tries. Yes, that second column is rather nicely touched, though I say
it, for hands and eyes of sixty-two; but when once the wind stops I