be, if one plastered them in the
foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all
events--the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour
which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then,
what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, _so_! Not
altogether,--for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the
right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once
admitted within the door. And then--when I know what Horne thinks
of--you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired
you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I _could_ NOT
begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends--he has such
very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and
_none_, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than
your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed--truth
remains the truth--so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much
for what I say _now_ as for what was said _then_! 'King John' is very
fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and
uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor
conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to
resist--a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced
to complete another fashioned morality--a segment of a circle of
larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your
own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how
and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with
quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one
to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all
injuries--revenge in no case'--that is plain. 'Take what you conceive
to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy
evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'--_that_ is plain,
too,--but, call Otto's act _no_ wrong, or being one, not such as
should be avenged--and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is
a 'recreant'--just what needs the slight punishment of instant death
to the remarker--and ... where is the way? What _is_ clear?

--Not my letter! which goes on and on--'dear letters'--sweetest?
because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall
see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own--I have not half said
what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and whic