Part 18 (1/2)

voyage! Or we can go for a shorter period and come home by rail. It won't cost us much.

[Footnote 38: ”A Great Emergency,” vol. xi.]

I am so glad to think of you in the dear _Old_--_New_ Forest.

Now mind you come--if only to see my Nelson (bureau) Relic!! It is such a comfort to me and _my papers_!

Ever your most loving sister, J.H.E.

TO MRS. ELDER.

_X Lines, South Camp._ August 7, 1874.

MY DEAR AUNT HORATIA,

I have begged the Tiger Tom for you!

He is the handsomest I ever saw, with such a head! His name is _Peter_. [_Sketch._]

Nothing--I a.s.sure you, can exceed his beauty--or the depth of his stripes....

If I had not too many cats already I should have adopted Peter long ago. We always quote William Blake's poem to him when we see him prowling about our garden.

”Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, In the forest of the night, What immortal Hand and Eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?”

Do you remember it?

I feel _quite a wretch_ not to like your ”Ploughman”[39] as well as usual. There is always poetry in your things, but TO ME the _spirit_ of this one has not quite that reality which is the highest virtue of ”a sentiment”--or at least its greatest strength. But I may be wrong. Only that kind of constant lifting of the soul from the labour of daily drudgery to the Father of our spirits seems to me one of the highest, latest, and most refined Christian Graces in natures farthest removed from ”the ape and tiger,” and most at leisure for contemplative wors.h.i.+p. I know there are exceptions. Rural contemplative saints among shepherds and ploughmen. But that the agricultural labourer as a type seeks ”Nature's G.o.d” at the plough-tail and in the bosom of his family I fear is _not_ the case--and it would be very odd if poverty and ignorance did lead to such results, even in the advantages of an ”open-air” life. Perhaps Burns knew such a Cottar on Sat.u.r.day Nights as he painted--he wasn't _sick_ himself! unless you interpret _a neet wi' Burns_ by that poem!--and there has been one contemplative Shepherd on Salisbury Plain--though the proverb says--

”Salisbury Plain Is seldom without a thief or twain.”

--_not_ I believe supposed to refer to highwaymen!! and agricultural labourers stand (among trades) statistically high (or low!) for the crime of murder.

[Footnote 39: Sonnet by H.S. Elder, _Aunt Judy's Magazine_.]

But I won't inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction _in my inside_ that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned--not the ignorant--who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising sun--though YOUR mind might overflow with awe and admiration.

As to the last verse--that a ”cot” should ever be ”cheerful” which ”serves him for” washhouse, kitchen, nursery and all--is a triumph of the ”softening influence of use”--and I concede it to you! But where ”he reigns as a king his toils forgot” is, I am convinced, at the Black Bull with highly-drugged beer!!!!!!

Now am I _not_ a Brute?

And yet it is _very_ pretty, and--strange to say--the cla.s.s to whom I believe it would be acceptable, is the cla.s.s of whom I believe it is not (typically) true, and PERHAPS it is good for every cla.s.s to have an _ideal_ of its own circ.u.mstances before its eyes. But I don't think it is good for rich people's children to grow up with the belief that twelve s.h.i.+llings a week, and cider and a pig, are the wisest and happiest earthly circ.u.mstances in which humanity with large families can be placed for their temporal and spiritual progress. I don't think it ever leads to a wish in the young Squire to exchange with Hodge for the good of his own soul, but I think it fosters a fixed conviction that Hodge has nothing to complain of, _plus_ being placed at a particular advantage as to his eternal concerns.