It is long since I have heard from you: which means, long since I have written to you. But do not impute this to as long forgetfulness on my part. My days and years go on one so like another: I see and hear no new thing or person; and to tell you that I go for a month or a week to our barren coast, which is all the travel I have to tell of, you can imagine all that as easily as my stay at home, with the old Pictures about me, and often the old Books to read. I went indeed to London last February for the sole purpose of seeing our Donne: and glad am I to have done so as I heard it gave him a little pleasure. That is a closed Book now. His Death {337} was not unexpected, and even not to be deprecated, as you know; but I certainly never remember a year of such havock among my friends as this: if not by Death itself, by Death's preliminary work and warning. . . . I wonder to find myself no worse dealt with than by Bronchitis, bad enough, which came upon me last Christmas, hung upon me all Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and though comparatively dormant for the last three wet weeks (perhaps from repeated doses of Sea Air) gives occasional Signs that it is not dead, but, on the contrary, will revive with Winter. Let me hear at least how you have been, and how are; I shall not grudge your being all well. Aldis Wright has sent me a very fine Photo of Spedding done from one of Mrs. Cameron's of which a copy is at Trinity Lodge. It is so fine that I scarce know if it gives me more pleasure or pain to look at it. Insomuch that I keep it in a drawer, not yet able to make up my mind to have it framed and so hung up before me. My good old Housekeeper has been (along with so many more) very ill, bedded for five or six weeks; only now able to get about again. I have this morning been scolding her for sending away a woman who came to do her work, without consulting me beforehand: she makes out that the woman wanted to go: I find the woman is very ready to return. 'These are my troubles, Mr. Wesley,' as a Gentleman said to him when the Footman had put too much coal on the fire. _To W. F. Pollock_. WOODBRIDGE. [1882.] MY DEAR POLLOCK, . . . The Book which has really, and deeply, interested me, and quite against Expectation, is Froude's Carlyle Biography; which has (quite contrary to expectation also) not only made me honour Carlyle more, but even love him, which I had never taken into account before. In the Biography, Froude seems to me to treat his man with Candour and Justice: even a little too severe in attributing to systematic Selfishness what seems to me rather unreflecting neglect, Carlyle's relations to his Wife, whom, so far as we read, he loved. Of his Love for his own Family, his Generosity to them, and his own sturdy refusal of help from others, one cannot doubt. _To C. E. Norton_. WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 20, [1882]. MY DEAR NORTON,