eaving my Wife
here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen so weak that she
gave me real terror in the spring-time, and made the Doctor look
very grave indeed: she continued too weak for traveling: I was
worn out as I had never in my life been. So, on the longest day
of June, I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, I
may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest _magnetic
sleep,_" and lay there avoiding the intercourse of men. Most
wearisome had their gabble become; almost unearthly. But indeed
all was unearthly in that humor. The gushing of my native
brooks, the _sough_ of the old solitary woods, the great roar of
old native Solway (billowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by
the Moon): all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I
cannot tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; yet
_towards_ rest I do think at all events, the time had come when I
behoved to quit it again. I have been here since September
evidently another little "chapter" or paragraph, _not_ altogether
inert, is getting forward. But I must not speak of these things.
How can I speak of them on a miserable scrap of blue paper?
Looking into your kind-eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not
here. Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: if
I can (in all senses) _rightly hold my peace,_ I think much will
yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great thing I worship at
present; almost the sole tenant of my Pantheon. Let a man know
rightly how to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself,
"Silence is of Eternity." Ah me, I think how I could rejoice to
quit these jarring discords and jargonings of Babel, and go far,
far away! I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of
money to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud of
London from my feet, and go and bury myself in some green place,
and never print any syllable more. Perhaps it is better as
it is.

But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor of
"Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of news.
There is a man here called John Sterling (_Reverend_ John of the
Church of England too), whom I love better than anybody I have
met with, since a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at
Craigenputtock, and vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling
has written; but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive.
Across several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism and
others, my heart loves the man. H