one mast, and also
H.M.S. _Fly_, and nothing else. If a cattle vessel came from Sydney
she would probably return in a few days, and would take a mail, but
we have had east wind for a month and nothing can come in.

'_Aug_. 1.--The _Harlequin_ has just come from Otago, and is to sail
for Singapore _when the wind changes_, and by that route (which I
hope to take myself sometime) I send you this. Much good may it do
you. Your novel surprised me by being so perfect as a work of art.
I expected something more changeable and unfinished. You have
polished to some purpose. If I were to do so I should get tired, and
weary every one else in about two pages. No sign of this weariness
in your book--you must have had abundance, having kept it all to
yourself!

'You are very different from me in having no doctrine to preach. It
is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production. Has the
world gone so well with you that you have no protest to make against
its absurdities? Did you never sneer or declaim in your first
sketches? I will scold you well when I see you. I do not believe in
Mr. Rivers. There are no _good_ men of the Brocklehurst species. A
missionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, or he
goes from enthusiasm, and that is both too good and too bad a quality
for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in such a
man. You have done wisely in choosing to imagine a high class of
readers. You never stop to explain or defend anything, and never
seem bothered with the idea. If Mrs. Fairfax or any other
well-intentioned fool gets hold of this what will she think? And
yet, you know, the world is made up of such, and worse. Once more,
how have you written through three volumes without declaring war to
the knife against a few dozen absurd doctrines, each of which is
supported by "a large and respectable class of readers"? Emily seems
to have had such a class in her eye when she wrote that strange thing
_Wuthering Heights_. Anne, too, stops repeatedly to preach
commonplace truths. She has had a still lower class in her mind's
eye. Emily seems to have followed the bookseller's advice. As to
the price you got, it was certainly Jewish. But what could the
people do? If they had asked you to fix it, do you know yourself how
many ciphers y