mmand, he led a life of absolute
mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his
nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence,
the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy
city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment
that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his
return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented
thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being
spoken to by persons of his acquaintance--an unfavorable result of
"solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]

STAR HOTEL, GLASGOW, GEORGE SQUARE, October 4th.
DEAR HARRIET,

My acquaintance with the H---- D----s dates only from my last visit to
Glasgow, when they joined our party at this hotel, and returned to
Carolside with us. The lady is a daughter of a family who are intimate
friends of T---- M----, and was presented to me when a girl in London
some years ago. She has since married, and I met her again, with her
husband, here a little while ago.... They both show a very kind desire
to be civil and amiable to me, and I like them both, and her especially.
They have spent the last five years of their lives wandering together
about Europe and Asia. They have no children, and have travelled without
any of the servants that generally attend wealthy English people abroad
(courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so in love with their
wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch,
and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally
to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice
all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional
constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and
to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant to their nomadic
_no_-habits. G---- D----, on their return to Ardoch, proposed to his
wife to take up their abode in two of the rooms of their fine large
house, and let the rest to some pleasant and amusing people; for, he
said, they never could think of living in that house by themselves....

Your distress about my readings I answered with a slight feeling that it
was a pity you should begin to be anxious and troubled about the details
of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I
paid heed, neverth