weak; madame would have him
go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is weak, I
suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency--I am your
pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for explosion we
do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. He
pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you
perceive. How often have we not discussed what would have become of him,
with that "rocket brain" of his, in less quiet times! Yet, when he was
addressing a deputation of workmen the other day, he recommended patience
to them as one of the virtues that count under wisdom. He is curiously
impatient for knowledge. One of his reasons for not accepting Colonel
Halkett's offer of his yacht is, that he will not be able to have books
enough on board. Definite instead of vast and hazy duties are to be
desired for him, I think. Most fervently I pray that he will obtain a
ship and serve some years. At the risk of your accusing me of
"sententious posing," I would say, that men who do not live in the
present chiefly, but hamper themselves with giant tasks in excess of
alarm for the future, however devoted and noble they may be--and he is an
example of one that is--reduce themselves to the dimensions of pigmies;
they have the cry of infants. You reply, Foresight is an element of love
of country and mankind. But how often is not the foresight guess-work?
'He has not spoken of the DAWN project. To-day he is repeating one of
uncle's novelties--"Sultry Tories." The sultry Tory sits in the sun and
prophecies woefully of storm, it appears. Your accusation that I am one
at heart amuses me; I am not quite able to deny it. "Sultriness" I am not
conscious of. But it would appear to be an epithet for the Conservatives
of wealth. So that England, being very wealthy, we are to call it a
sultry country? You are much wanted, for where there is no "middleman
Liberal" to hold the scales for them, these two have it all their own
way, which is not good for them.

Captain Beauchamp quotes you too. It seems that you once talked to him of
a machine for measuring the force of blows delivered with the fist, and
compared his efforts to those of one perpetually practising at it: and
this you are said to have called "The case of the Constitutional Realm
and the extreme Radical." Elsewhere the Radical smites at iron or rotten
wood; in England it is a cushion on springs. Did you say it? H