ust to take the edge off the sense of
illimitable space, eternity, and a future state, and the like, that is
brought home to one, even in this small attic, by the wide, empty floor.

You would require to know, what only I can ever know, many grim and many
maudlin passages out of my past life to feel how great a change has been
made for me by this past summer. Let me be ever so poor and thread-paper
a soul, I am going to try for the best.

These good booksellers of mine have at last got a _Werther_ without
illustrations. I want you to like Charlotte. Werther himself has every
feebleness and vice that could tend to make his suicide a most virtuous
and commendable action; and yet I like Werther too--I don't know why,
except that he has written the most delightful letters in the world.
Note, by the way, the passage under date June 21st not far from the
beginning; it finds a voice for a great deal of dumb, uneasy,
pleasurable longing that we have all had, times without number. I looked
that up the other day for _Roads_, so I know the reference; but you will
find it a garden of flowers from beginning to end. All through the
passion keeps steadily rising, from the thunderstorm at the
country-house--there was thunder in that story too--up to the last wild
delirious interview; either Lotte was no good at all, or else Werther
should have remained alive after that; either he knew his woman too
well, or else he was precipitate. But an idiot like that is hopeless;
and yet, he wasn't an idiot--I make reparation, and will offer eighteen
pounds of best wax at his tomb. Poor devil! he was only the weakest--or,
at least, a very weak strong man.

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

_17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, Friday, September 12, 1873._

... I was over last night, contrary to my own wish, in Leven, Fife; and
this morning I had a conversation of which, I think, some account might
interest you. I was up with a cousin who was fishing in a mill-lade, and
a shower of rain drove me for shelter into a tumble-down steading
attached to the mill. There I found a labourer cleaning a byre, with
whom I fell into talk. The man was to all appearance as heavy, as
_hebete_, as any English clodhopper; but I knew I was in Scotland, and
launched out forthright into Education and Politics and the aims of
one's life. I told him how I had found the peasantry in Suffolk, and
added that their state had made me feel quite pained and down-hearted.
"