o 'with a little Spanish Wife, but no pupils.' Carlyle
would name him with a sort of sneer in the Life of Sterling; {184} could
not see that any such notice was more than needless, just after
Edgeworth's Death. This is all a little Scotch indelicacy to other
people's feelings. But now Time and his own Mortality soften him. I
have been looking over his Letters to me about Cromwell: the amazing
perseverance and accuracy of the Man, who writes so passionately! In a
letter of about 1845 or 6 he says he has burned at least six attempts at
Cromwell's Life: and finally falls back on sorting and elucidating the
Letters, as a sure Groundwork. . . .

I have this Summer made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom I
have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sevigne. I
had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of
hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs.
Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not those from
Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and now I want to go and
visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[1875.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I
had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I
thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go
without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. As yet however I cannot
screw my Courage to go up: I have no Curiosity about what is to be seen
or heard there; my Day is done. I have not been very well all this
Summer, and fancy that I begin to 'smell the Ground,' as Sailors say of
the Ship that slackens speed as the Water shallows under her. I can't
say I have much care for long Life: but still less for long Death: I mean
a lingering one.

Did you ever read Madame de Sevigne? I never did till this summer,
rather repelled by her perpetual harping on her Daughter. But it is all
genuine, and the same intense Feeling expressed in a hundred natural yet
graceful ways: and beside all this such good Sense, good Feeling, Humour,
Love of Books and Country Life, as makes her certainly the Queen of all
Letter writers.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, SUFFOLK.
(_Post Mark Dec._ 8.) _Dec._ 9/75.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Carlyle's Niece has sent me a Card from you, asking for a Copy of an
Agamemnon: taken--I must not say, translated--from AEschylus. It w