dam Bede" was as interesting a sofa companion as you could have
found; a very lovely book--wit and pathos almost equally good,
pathos quite the best though, to my mind. We are reading aloud
another charming book of Lowell's, "Democracy," and other essays in
the same volume; and I flutter about from book to book by myself,
and have still two books of "Paradise Lost" to read, and am
wondering what is going to happen to Adam and Eve. I was very
miserable when I found she ate the forbidden fruit. She had made
such fair promises to be good. Alas, alas! why did she break them?
That story of the Fall, though I suppose nobody thinks it verbally
true, is always to me most full of deep meaning, and seems to be
the story of every mortal man and woman born into this wondrous
world.

_Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal_

DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, _October_ 3, 1888

Agatha gone yesterday to Pembroke Lodge--Rollo gone to-day to join
her, so my wee bairnie and I are "left by our lone," as you used to
say. "Einsam nein, dass bin ich nicht, denn die Geister meiner
Lieben, Sie umschweben mich." [109] I think it's good now and then
to let the blessed and beautiful memories of the past have their
way and float in waking dreams before our eyes, and not be forced
down beneath daily duties and occupations and enjoyments, till the
pain of keeping them there becomes hard to bear. Yet, "act, act in
the living present" is very, very much the rightest thing; though I
don't think I quite like the past to be called the _dead_
past, when it is so fearfully full of keenest life.

[109] "Lonely--no, that am I not, for the spirits of my loved ones,
they hover around me."

_Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel_

DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, _October_ 8, 1888

... We have had Rollo's old Oxford friend, Dr. Drewitt, here for
two nights--the very cheerfulest of guests. He is head of the
Victoria Hospital for Children, and what with keen interest in his
profession, and intense love of nature, animate and inanimate, I
don't think he would know how to be bored. Hard-worked men have far
the best of it here below, although we are accustomed to look upon
"men of leisure" as those to be envied; but how seldom one finds a
man or woman, who lives a life in earnest, and who has eyes to see
and observe, taking a gloomy