[35] Fifty drawings made for me by Signor Caldara of Venice, being part of a complete Venetian Herbal in process of execution. I count none of my money better spent than this. [36] Annual gift to monastery of Assisi, for 1875; not sent last year because I meant to go there. Due always on the Corpus Domini. [37] Exaggerated a little, I’m afraid.—J. R. [38] The shells sent, for which I heartily thank my correspondent, are, I think, the same as mine, only not so white. [39] Abram’s mountain home seems to have been much like Horace’s, as far as I can make out: but see accounts of modern travellers. Our translation “in the plain of Mamre” (Genesis xiii. 28; xiv. 13) is clearly absurd; the gist of the separation between Lot and Abram being Lot’s choice of the plain, as ‘the Paradise of God,’ and Abram’s taking the rock ground. The Vulgate says ‘in the ravine’ of Mamre; the Septuagint, ‘by the oak.’ I doubt not the Hebrew is meant to carry both senses, as of a rocky Vallombrosa; the Amorites at that time knew how to keep their rain, and guide their springs. Compare the petition of Caleb’s daughter when she is married, after being brought up on this very farm, Joshua xv. 17, 18; comparing also xiv. 14, 15, and of the hill country generally, xvi. 15, and Deut. xi. 10–12, 17. [40] I need scarcely desire the reader to correct the misprint of ‘maternal’ for ‘paternal’ in line 14 of p. 90 in Fors of March. In last Fors, please put the i into ‘material’ in p. 112, line 16, and a comma before and after ‘there’ in p. 113, line 8. [41] Vulgar modern Puritanism has shown its degeneracy in nothing more than in its incapability of understanding Scott’s exquisitely finished portraits of the Covenanter. In ‘Old Mortality’ alone, there are four which cannot be surpassed; the typical one, Elizabeth, faultlessly sublime and pure; the second, Ephraim Macbriar, giving the too common phase of the character, which is touched with ascetic insanity; the third, Mause, coloured and made sometimes ludicrous by Scottish conceit, but utterly strong and pure at heart; the last, Balfour, a study of supreme interest, showing the effect of the Puritan faith, sincerely held, on a naturally and incurably cruel and base spirit. His last battle-cry—“Down with the Amorites,” the chief Amorite being Lord Evandale, is intensely illustrative of all I have asked you to learn to-day. Add to these four studies, from this single novel, those in the ‘Heart of Midlothian,’ and Nicol Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice from ‘Rob Roy,’ and you have a series of theological analyses far beyond those of any other philosophical work that I know, of any period. [42] For accounts in London, to save drawing small cheques. I have not room for detail this month, the general correspondence being lengthy. [43] ‘Early History of Mankind,’ (a book of rare value and research, however,) p. 379.