thise with my feelings on this subject, that you heard
my aspirations and speculations very tranquilly, and by no means
seemed to think the flaming sword could be any pleasant addition to
the joys of paradise. I have now outlived youth; and, though I dare
not say that I have outlived all its illusions, that the romance is
quite gone from life, the veil fallen from truth, and that I see both
in naked reality, yet, certainly, many things are not to me what they
were ten years ago; and amongst the rest, "the pomp and circumstance
of war" have quite lost in my eyes their factitious glitter. I have
still no doubt that the shock of moral earthquakes wakens a vivid
sense of life both in nations and individuals; that the fear of
dangers on a broad national scale diverts men's minds momentarily
from brooding over small private perils, and, for the time, gives
them something like largeness of views; but, as little doubt have I
that convulsive revolutions put back the world in all that is good,
check civilisation, bring the dregs of society to its surface--in
short, it appears to me that insurrections and battles are the acute
diseases of nations, and that their tendency is to exhaust by their
violence the vital energies of the countries where they occur. That
England may be spared the spasms, cramps, and frenzy-fits now
contorting the Continent and threatening Ireland, I earnestly pray!

'With the French and Irish I have no sympathy. With the Germans and
Italians I think the case is different--as different as the love of
freedom is from the lust of license.'

TO MISS WOOLER

'HAWORTH, _September_ 27_th_, 1850.

'MY DEAR MISS WOOLER,--When I tell you that I have already been to
the Lakes this season, and that it is scarcely more than a month
since I returned, you will understand that it is no longer within my
power to accept your kind invitation.

'I wish I could have gone to you. I wish your invitation had come
first; to speak the truth, it would have suited me better than the
one by which I profited. It would have been pleasant, soothing, in
many ways beneficial, to have spent two weeks with you in your
cottage-lodgings. But these reflections are vain. I have already
had my excursion, and there is an end of it. Sir J.