all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them--I feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soapfroth. I think it well for the honour of Britain that Julius Caesar did not first land in this County. A Devonshirer standing on his native hills is not a distinct object--he does not show against the light--a wolf or two would dispossess him. I like, I love England. I like its living men--give me a long brown plain "for my morning,"[51] so I may meet with some of Edmund Ironside's descendants. Give me a barren mould, so I may meet with some shadowing of Alfred in the shape of a Gipsy, a huntsman or a shepherd. Scenery is fine--but human nature is finer--the sward is richer for the tread of a real nervous English foot--the Eagle's nest is finer, for the Mountaineer has looked into it. Are these facts or prejudices? Whatever they be, for them I shall never be able to relish entirely any Devonshire scenery--Homer is fine, Achilles is fine, Diomed is fine, Shakspeare is fine, Hamlet is fine, Lear is fine, but dwindled Englishmen are not fine. Where too the women are so passable, and have such English names, such as Ophelia, Cordelia etc. that they should have such Paramours or rather Imparamours--As for them, I cannot in thought help wishing, as did the cruel Emperor, that they had but one head, and I might cut it off to deliver them from any horrible Courtesy they may do their undeserving countrymen, I wonder I meet with no born monsters--O Devonshire, last night I thought the moon had dwindled in heaven---- I have never had your Sermon from Wordsworth, but Mr. Dilke lent it me. You know my ideas about Religion. I do not think myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is proveable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject, merely for one short 10 minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack o' Lantern to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer--being in itself a Nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads--Things real--things semireal--and nothings. Things real, such as existences of Sun moon and Stars--and passages of Shakspeare.--Things semireal, such as love, the Clouds etc., which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist--and Nothings, which are made great and dignified by an ardent pursuit--which, by the by, stamp the Burgundy mark on the bottles of our minds, insomuch as they are able to "_consecrate whate'er they look upon_." I have written a sonnet here of a somewhat collateral nature--so don't imagine it an "apropos des bottes"--