le a platitude as the
same remark would be in the small talk of Satan and Beelzebub.

If there were such a thing as _blue_-hot iron, it would describe
the sky tonight. I cannot help dreaming of some wild fairy-tale in
which the whole round cosmos should be a boiling pot, with the flames
of Purgatory under it, and that soon I shall have the satisfaction of
seeing such a thing as boiled mountains, boiled cities, and a boiled
moon and stars. A tremendous picture. Yet I am perfectly happy as
usual. After all, why should we object to be boiled? Potatoes, for
example, are better boiled than raw--why should we fear to be boiled
into new shapes in the cauldron? These things are an allegory.

. . . I am so glad to hear you say . . . that, in your own words "it
is good for us to be here"--where you are at present. The same remark,
if I remember right, was made on the mountain of the Transfiguration.
It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that
remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought
to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the
long Vision we call life--other things superficially, but this always
in our depths. "It is good for us to be here--it is good for us to be
here," repeating itself eternally. And if, after many joys and
festivals and frivolities, it should be our fate to have to look on
while one of us is, in a most awful sense of the words, "transfigured
before our eyes": shining with the whiteness of death--at least, I
think, we cannot easily fancy ourselves wishing not to be at our
post. Not I, certainly. It was good for me to be there.

* * * *

11 Warwick Gardens
(postmarked July 11, 1899.)

. . . The novel, after which you so kindly enquire, is proceeding
headlong. It received another indirect stimulus today, when Mr.
Garnett insisted on taking me out to lunch, gave me a gorgeous repast
at a restaurant, succeeded in plucking the secret of my private
employment from my bosom, and made me promise to send him some
chapters of it. I certainly cannot complain of not being
sympathetically treated by the literary men I know. I wonder where
the jealous, spiteful, depreciating man of letters we read of in
books has got to. It's about time he turned up, I think. Excuse me
for talking about these trivialities. . . .

I have made a