You repay me my letter with usurious interest. However you are _sui juris_--or ought I to say _tui_?--and I doubt a court of equity would extend to you the protection which it bestows on improvident young gentlemen. No I had nothing to write of Acton. A few memorable talks on Sunday afternoons were all I had. To my great regret I did not hear the first of the Eranus papers.... What the literary Nachlass is like I cannot tell and am not likely to know. I saw the notes for an introductory chapter[29] confided to Figgis. They seemed to me to be quite useless in the hands of anyone save him who made them. They struck me as very sad: the notes of a man who could not bring to the birth the multitude of thoughts that were crowding in his mind. Have you seen Sidgwick's small book on philosophy? I think it in some respects the most Sidgwickian thing that is in print. I can hear most of it--some of it from the hearth-rug or at the Eranus. I think that the K.C.B. came to Stephen just at the right moment and that he is really pleased by it. About his condition I don't know the exact truth. The good thing is that there is little discomfort. He is writing Ford Lectures for Oxford, but says that he will not be able to deliver them. Have you seen in his _George Eliot_ the remark about Edmund Gurney? "I have always fancied--though without any evidence, that some touches in Deronda were drawn from one of her friends, Edmund Gurney a man of remarkable charm of character and as good-looking as Deronda" (p. 191). What think you? TO HENRY JACKSON. _20 December, 1902._ MUY SEÑOR MIO Deseo que pase Vd. bien las Pascuas y que tenga feliz año nuevo Quedo de Vd. atento y Seguro Servidor que besa su mano F. W. MAITLAND.