DEAREST FRIEND: At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend Carpenter, who never comes to see us and is [as] reluctant to write letters as--somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable, elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing--for "the old shanty" had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely, & perhaps the cooking, &c., not well attended to.--There seems a curious kind of ebb and flow about the recognition of you in England--just now there are signs of the flow--of a steadily gathering great wave, one indication of which is the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh--one of the "Round Table" Series--no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to see it, I will send you one. On the whole I like it (barring one or two stupidities)--at any rate, as compared with what has hitherto been written. My poor article has so far been rejected by editors--so I have laid it by for a little, to come with a fresh eye & see if I can make it in any way more likely to win a hearing--though I often say to myself, "If they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their ears?" But on the other hand there is always the chance of leading some to read the Poems who had not else done so.--Percy & Norah and Archie, now grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with us, which is a great pleasure. I am deep in Froude's last volumes of "Carlyle's Life in London". Folks are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & _his_ grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to me, & will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a husband--that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just--& as to his temper & irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him--it was a young student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below, looking up at her, was a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation & gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out again--which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping, over hill & dale as long as he pleases--legs would content me and a sound breathing apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice, too, is just now