“You ask what I purpose to do further, or leave untouched. I desire to leave untouched some 3,000 acres of moor-land needed for their sheep, serviceable for peat fuel, freedom of air and mind and body, and the growth of all the lovely things of moss and heather. Wherever land is capable of improvement, I hold it is a grave responsibility until it is done. You must come and look for yourself some day. “I enclose a cheque for ten guineas for St. George’s Fund, with my best wishes for this new year. “Ever yours affectionately.” I have questioned one or two minor points in my friend’s letters; but on the whole, they simply describe a piece of St. George’s old England, still mercifully left,—and such as I hope to make even a few pieces more, again; conquering them out of the Devil’s new England. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXIX. On a foggy forenoon, two or three days ago, I wanted to make my way quickly from Hengler’s Circus to Drury Lane Theatre, without losing time which might be philosophically employed; and therefore afoot, for in a cab I never can think of anything but how the driver is to get past whatever is in front of him. On foot, then, I proceeded, and accordingly by a somewhat complex diagonal line, to be struck, as the stars might guide me, between Regent Circus and Covent Garden. I have never been able, by the way, to make any coachman understand that such diagonals were not always profitable. Coachmen, as far as I know them, always possess just enough geometry to feel that the hypothenuse is shorter than the two sides, but I never yet could get one to see that an hypothenuse constructed of cross streets in the manner of the line A C, had no advantage, in the matter of distance to be traversed, over the simple thoroughfares A B, B C, while it involved the loss of the momentum of the carriage, and a fresh start for the cattle, at seventeen corners instead of one, not to mention the probability of a block at half a dozen of them, none the less frequent since underground railways, and more difficult to get out of, in consequence of the increasing discourtesy and diminishing patience of all human creatures.