. . . I assure you I am deeply obliged to you for the great trouble you have taken, and the kindness you have shewn about the portrait. In spite of all our objections (yours amongst the number) it is very like, and perhaps only misses of being quite like by that much more than hairbreadth difference, which one would be foolish to expect to see adequated. Perhaps those painters are right who set out with rather idealising the likeness of those we love; for we do so ourselves probably when we look at them. And as art must miss the last delicacy of nature, it may be well to lean toward a better than our eyes can affirm. This is all wrong. Truth is the ticket; but those who like strongly, in this as in other cases, love to be a little blind, or to see too much. One fancies that no face can be too delicate and handsome to be the depository of a noble spirit: and if we are not as good physiognomists as we are metaphysicians (that is, intimate with any one particular mind) our outward eyes will very likely be at variance with our inward, or rather be influenced by them. Very instructive all this! I wish you would come to me to-night for an hour at ten: I don't know if any one else will be here. _To T. Carlyle_. ALDERMAN BROWNE'S, BEDFORD. [20 _Septr_. 1847.] DEAR CARLYLE, I was very glad of your letter: especially as regards that part in it about the Derbyshire villages. In many other parts of England (not to mention my own Suffolk) you would find the same substantial goodness among the people, resulting (as you say) from the funded virtues of many good humble men gone by. I hope you will continue to teach us all, as you have done, to make some use and profit of all this: at least, not to let what good remains to die away under penury and neglect. I also hope you will have some mercy now, and in future, on the 'Hebrew rags' which are grown offensive to you; considering that it was these rags that really did bind together those virtues which have transmitted down to us all the good you noticed in Derbyshire. If the old creed was so commendably effective in the Generals and Counsellors of two hundred years ago, I think we may be well content to let it work still among the ploughmen and weavers of to-day; and even to suffer some absurdities in the Form, if the Spirit does well upon the whole. Even poor Exeter Hall ought, I think, to be borne with; it is at least better than the wretched Oxford business. When I was in Dorsetshire some weeks ago, and saw chancels done up in sky-blue and gold, with niches, candles, an _Altar_, rails to keep off the profane laity, and the parson (like your Reverend Mr. Hitch {227}) _intoning_ with his back to the people, I thought the Exeter Hall war-cry of 'The Bible--the whole Bible--and nothing but the Bible' a good cry: I wanted Oliver and his dragoons to march in and put an end to it all. Yet our Established Parsons (when quiet and in their