n. I
make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder
if I really keep them better? But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send me
back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which
He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in
conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful
of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in
leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe
that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those
good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect
sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may
have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for
good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are
withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive
the lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us while
life is young?

Eleanor and I worked at our lessons by ourselves. We always had her
mother to "fall back upon," as we said. When we took up the study of
Italian in order to be able to read Dante--moved thereto by the
attractions of the long volume of Flaxman's illustrations of the 'Divina
Commedia'--we had to "fall back" a good deal on Mrs. Arkwright's
scholarship. And this in spite of all the helps the library afforded us,
the best of dictionaries, English "cribs," and about six of those
elaborate commentaries upon the poem, of which Italians have been so
prolific.

During the winter the study of languages was commonly uppermost; in
summer sketching was more favoured.

I do think sketching brings one a larger amount of pleasure than almost
any other occupation. And like "collecting," it is a very sociable
pursuit when one has fellow-sketchers as well as fellow-naturalists. And
this, I must confess, is a merit in my eyes, I being of a sociable
disposition! Eleanor could live alone, I think, and be happy; but I
depend largely on my fellow-creatures.

Jack and I were talking rather sentimentally the other day about "old
times," and I said:

"How jolly it was, that summer we used to sketch so much--all four of us
together!"

And Jack, who was rubbing some new stuff of his own compounding into his
fishing-boots, replied:

"Awfully. I vote we take to it again when the weather's warmer."

But Jack is so sympathetic, he will agree with