re; that is, the old
dotage of a Cathedral town superstition worked up into activity by a
choleric disposition. He seems, as I told you, of the sanguine
temperament; and he mentioned a long illness during which he was not
allowed to read a book, etc., which looks like some touch of the head.
Perhaps brain fever. Perhaps no such thing, but all my fancy. He was
very civil; ordered in a bottle of Sherry and biscuits: asked me to dine,
which I could not do. And so ends my long story. But you must see him.

Yours,

E. F. G.

He spoke of a portrait of Oliver that had been in his family since
Oliver's time--till sold for a few shillings to some one in Norwich by
some rascal relation. The portrait unlike all he has seen in painting or
engraving: very pale, very thoughtful, very commanding, he says. If he
ever recovers it, he will present you with it; he says if it should cost
him 10 pounds--for he admires you. {220}

_To Bernard Barton_.

EXETER, _August_ 16/47.

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . Here I am at Exeter: a place I never was in before. It is a fine
country round about; and last evening I saw landscape that would have
made Churchyard crazy. The Cathedral is not worth seeing to an ordinary
observer, though I dare say Archaeologists find it has its own private
merits. . . .

Tell Churchyard we were wrong about Poussin's Orion. I found this out on
my second visit to it. What disappointed me, and perhaps him, at first
sight, was a certain stiffness in Orion's own figure; I expected to see
him stalk through the landscape forcibly, as a giant usually does; but I
forgot at the moment that Orion was _blind_, and must walk as a blind
man. Therefore this stiffness in his figure was just the right thing. I
think however the picture is faulty in one respect, that the atmosphere
of the landscape is not that of _dawn_; which it should be most visibly,
since Morning is so principal an actor in the drama. All this seems to
be more addressed to Churchyard, who has seen the picture, than to you
who have not.

I saw also in London panoramas of Athens and the Himalaya mountains. In
the latter, you see the Ganges glittering a hundred and fifty miles off;
and far away the snowy peak of the mountain it rises from; that mountain
25,000 feet high. What's the use of coming to Exeter, when you can see
all this for a shilling in London? . . . And now I am going to the
Cathedral, where the Bishop has a cover to his seat sixty f