_" Voila le Bourgeois! le voila nu! But why should I
blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois? when I have held my peace?
Why did I hold my peace? Because I am a sceptic: _i.e._ a Bourgeois. We
believe in nothing, Symonds; you don't, and I don't; and these are two
reasons, out of a handful of millions, why England stands before the
world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to
take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even private effort
somehow betters and braces the general atmosphere. See, for example, if
England has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly
sensibility, they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon.
Police-Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my
_New Arabs_ to him and Cox, in default of other great public
characters.--Yours ever most affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

The following refers to an edition of Gray, with notes and a short
prefatory Life by Mr. Gosse; and to the publication of the _Child's
Garden of Verses_.

_Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, March 12, 1885._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--I was indeed much exercised how I could be worked into
Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the passage seemed to have been written
with a single eye to elucidate the--worst?--well, not a very good poem
of Gray's. Your little life is excellent, clean, neat, efficient. I have
read many of your notes, too, with pleasure. Your connection with Gray
was a happy circumstance; it was a suitable conjunction.

I did not answer your letter from the States, for what was I to say? I
liked getting it and reading it; I was rather flattered that you wrote
it to me; and then I'll tell you what I did--I put it in the fire. Why?
Well, just because it was very natural and expansive; and thinks I to
myself, if I die one of these fine nights, this is just the letter that
Gosse would not wish to go into the hands of third parties. Was I well
inspired? And I did not answer it because you were in your high places,
sailing with supreme dominion, and seeing life in a particular glory;
and I was peddling in a corner, confined to the house, overwhelmed with
necessary work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the very mild
form in which the disease approaches me, touched with a sort of bustling
cynicism. Why throw cold water? How ape your agreeable frame of mind?
In short, I held my tongue.

I have now published o