live--the thoughts, feelings,
and expressions even,--in a self-imposed circle limiting the
experience of two persons only--_there_ is the standard, and to _that_
the appeal--how should a third person know? His presence breaks the
line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the
originally inclosed spot--so that its trees, which were from side to
side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance
in the broad land; while its 'ferns such as I never saw before' and
which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid
the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's
general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole
value of such letters--the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed:
but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom
it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it
and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to
the ineffable mysteries of those 'upper-rooms,' now that the broom and
dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with
such unforeseen reverence ... but the carriage-sweep and quarry,
together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of
Wordsworth's Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the
direction of Miss Fenwick's house--surely, 'men's eyes were made to
see, so let them gaze' at all _this_! And so I, gazing with a clear
conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person
and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a
country-life; and _that_ knowledge gets to seem a high point of
attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of--for
_mine_ he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a '_great_'
poet before? Put one trait with the other--the theory of rural
innocence--alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with
style of 'the utmost grandeur that _even you_ can conceive' (speak for
yourself, Miss M.!)--and that amiable transition from two o'clock's
grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's happiness in
the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and
the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of
'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as
crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly--of
this--what can one say but that--no, best hold one's tongue and read