But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but love--to any worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I _am_ not but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely. And yet I produce nothing, am the author of _Brashiana_ and other works: tiddy-iddity--as if the works one wrote were anything but 'prentice's experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. After this break in my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see. Sursum Corda: Heave ahead: Here's luck. Art and Blue Heaven, April and God's Larks. Green reeds and the sky-scattering river. A stately music. Enter God! R. L. S. Ay, but you know, until a man can write that "Enter God," he has made no art! None! Come, let us take counsel together and make some! TO TREVOR HADDON During the height of the Provencal summer, for July and part of August, Stevenson went with his wife to the Baths of Royat in Auvergne (travelling necessarily by way of Clermont-Ferrand). His parents joined them at Royat for part of their visit. This and possibly the next following letters were written during the trip. The news here referred to was that his correspondent had won a scholarship at the Slade School. _La Solitude, Hyeres. But just now writing from Clermont-Ferrand, July 5, 1883._