_February 8th,_ 19--.--The _Standard_ has a large map of the North of France, where the fighting will be. It is very interesting. Reuben and his friends have gone up to town again. I saw the Reserves marching through Molesworth to-day; they are going to garrison Portsmouth.[16] The afternoon post did not come in. Reuben said he would telegraph, but I have not got any message. The 12.40 train was an hour late, so I suppose everything is upset by the war. Maria will have to come home by Bâle, and I do so dread the passage from Ostend for her; even the hour from Calais to Dover is more than she can bear. The vicar says that our Government will force the French to keep the Dover-Calais route open for civilians. He says it would be against the practice of civilised warfare to close it, and if that were done we should lay waste the whole country; but I fear he does not know much about the legal aspect of the thing: it is his heart, not his head that speaks. It is dreadful to think what I shall do with Mademoiselle[17] when she comes home with Maria. One can’t blame her when one thinks that it is her own country that is going to be harried and her own brothers brought here as prisoners; but it will be very difficult all the same. The man who was killed at Bigley races was not a Frenchman after all: the crowd only thought he was because he had blacked his face like a negro. It seems that Sir Henry was very hard in court, and said that the ringleaders were lucky not to be indicted for manslaughter. It has frozen again, and it is very slippery in the drive. They are having fireworks or something at Portsmouth, to judge by the sound. Jones told Jane he thought there was a bonfire as well, because he could see a glare now and then in the sky from the window in his room. His leg is setting nicely. ON REVELATIONS. ON REVELATIONS. Revelations, again, as we found to be the case with editing, do not properly constitute a department of the art of letters. Though they are of far more importance than any other branch of contemporary journalism, yet it is impossible to compare their publication to a creative act of pure literature. It may be urged that such Revelations as are written in the office of the newspaper publishing them are not only literature, but literature of a very high order. They are, on the face of it, extremely difficult to compose. If they are to have any chance of deceiving the public, the writer must thoroughly know the world which he counterfeits; he must be able to copy its literary style, its air, its errors. It is even sometimes necessary for him to attempt the exquisitely subtle art of forgery. The objection is well found; but it is not of this kind of Revelation that I propose to speak. It belongs to the higher branches of our art, and is quite unsuited to a little elementary manual.