_ ASSISI, SACRISTAN'S CELL, _25th June_ (1874).
This letter is all upside down, and this first page written last; for I didn't like something I had written about myself last night when I was tired, and have torn it off.
That star you saw beat like a heart must have been a dog star. A planet would not have twinkled. Far mightier, he, than any planet; burning with his own planetary host doubtless round him; and, on some speckiest of the specks of them, evangelical persons thinking our sun was made for _them_.
Ah, Susie, I do not pass, unthought of, the many sorrows of which you kindly tell me, to show me--for that is in your heart--how others have suffered also.
But, Susie, _you_ expect to see your Margaret again, and you will be happy with her in heaven. I wanted my Rosie _here_. In heaven I mean to go and talk to Pythagoras and Socrates and Valerius Publicola. I shan't care a bit for Rosie there, she needn't think it. What will gray eyes and red cheeks be good for _there_?
These pious sentiments are all written in my sacristan's cell.
This extract book[10] of yours will be most precious in its help to me, provided it is kept within somewhat narrow limits. As soon as it is done I mean to have it published in a strong and pretty but _cheap_ form, and it must not be too bulky. Consider, therefore, not only what you like, but how far and with whom each bit is likely to find consent and service. You will have to choose perhaps, after a little while, among what you have already chosen. I mean to leave it _wholly_ in your hands; it is to be Susie's choice of my writings.
Don't get into a flurry of responsibility, but don't at once write down all you have a mind to; I know you'll find a good deal! for you are exactly in sympathy with me in all things.
[Footnote 10: "Frondes Agrestes."]
* * * * *
ASSISI, _9th July, 1874_.
Your lovely letters are always a comfort to me; and not least when you tell me you are sad. You would be far less in sympathy with me if you were not, and in the "everything right" humor of some, even of some really good and kind persons, whose own matters are to their mind, and who understand by "Providence" the power which particularly takes care of _them_. This favoritism which goes so sweetly and pleasantly down with so many pious people is the chief of all stumbling-blocks to _me_. I must pray for everybody or nobody, and can't get into any conceptions of relation between Heaven and _me_, if not also between Heaven and earth, (and why Heaven should allow hairs in pens I can't think).
I take great care of myself, be quite sure of that, Susie; the worst of it is, here in Assisi everybody else wants me to take care of them.
Catharine brought me up as a great treat yesterday at dinner, ham dressed with as much garlic as could be stewed into it, and a plate of raw figs, telling me I was to eat them together!
The sun is changing the entire mountains of Assisi into a hot bottle with no flannel round it; but I can't get a ripe plum, peach, or cherry. All the milk turns sour, and one has to eat one's meat at its toughest or the thunder gets into it next day.
* * * * *
FOAM OF TIBER.
PERUGIA, _17th July_ (1874).
I am made anxious by your sweet letter of the 6th saying you have been ill and are "not much better."
The letter is all like yours, but I suppose however ill you were you would always write prettily, so that's little comfort.
About the Narcissus, please. I want them for my fishpond stream rather than for the bee-house one. The fishpond stream is very doleful, and wants to dance with daffodils if they would come and teach it. How happy we are in our native streams. A thunder-storm swelled the Tiber yesterday, and it rolled over its mill weirs in heaps, literally, of tossed water, the size of haycocks, but black brown like coffee with the grounds in it, mixed with a very little yellow milk. In some lights the foam flew like cast handfuls of heavy gravel. The chief flowers here are only broom and bindweed, and I begin to weary for my heather and for my Susie; but oh dear, the ways are long and the days few.
* * * * *
LUCCA, _29th July_ (1874).
I'm not going to be devoured when I come, by anybody, unless _you_ like to. I shall come to your window with the birds, to be fed myself.
And please at present always complain to me whenever you like. It is the over boisterous cheerfulness of common people that hurts me; your sadness is a help to me.
You shall have whatever name you like for your book provided you continue to like it after thinking over it long enough. You will not like "Gleanings," because you know one only gleans refuse--dropped ears--that other people don't care for. _You_ go into the garden and gather with choice the flowers you like best. That is not gleaning!
* * * * *
LUCCA, _10th August_ (1874).
I have been grieved not to write to you; but the number of things that vex me are so great just now, that unless by false effort I could write you nothing nice. It is very dreadful to live in Italy, and more dreadful to see one's England and one's English friends, all but a field or two, and a stream or two, and a one Susie and one Dr. Brown, fast becoming like Italy and the Italians.
I have too _much sympathy_ with your sorrow to write to you of it. What I have not sympathy with, is your hope; and how cruel it is to say this! But I am driven more and more to think there is to be no more good for a time, but a reign of terror of men and the elements alike; and yet it is so like what is foretold before the coming of the Son of man that perhaps in the extremest evil of it I may some day read the sign that our redemption draws nigh.
Now, Susie, invent a nice cluster of titles for the book and send them to me to choose from, to Hotel de l'Arno, Florence. I must get that out before the day of judgment, if I can. I'm so glad of your sweet flatteries in this note received to-day.
* * * * *
FLORENCE, _25th August_ (1874).
I have not been able to write to you, or any one lately, whom I don't want to tease, except Dr. Brown, whom I write to for counsel. My time is passed in a fierce steady struggle to save all I can every day, as a fireman from a smoldering ruin, of history or aspect. To-day, for instance, I've been just in time to ascertain the form of the cross of the Emperor, representing the power of the State in the greatest _political_ fresco of old times--fourteenth century. By next year, it may be next month, it will have dropped from the wall with the vibration of the railway outside, and be touched up with new gilding for the mob.
I am keeping well, but am in a terrible spell (literally, "spell," enchanted maze, that I can't get out of) of work.
I _was_ a little scandalized at the idea of your calling the book "word-painting." My dearest Susie, it is the chief provocation of my life to be called a "word-painter" instead of a thinker. I hope you haven't filled your book with descriptions. I thought it was the thoughts you were looking for?
"Posie" would be pretty. If you ask Joanie she will tell you perhaps _too_ pretty for _me_, and I can't think a bit to-night, for instead of robins singing I hear only blaspheming gamesters on the other side of the narrow street.
* * * * *
FLORENCE, _1st September_ (1874).
Don't be in despair about your book. I am sure it will be lovely. I'll see to it the moment I get home, but I've got into an entirely unexpected piece of business here, the interpretation of a large chapel[11] full of misunderstood, or not at all understood, frescoes; and I'm terribly afraid of breaking down, so much drawing has to be done at the same time. It has stranded botany and everything.
I was kept awake half of last night by drunken blackguards howling on the bridge of the Holy Trinity in the pure half-moonlight. This is the kind of discord I have to bear, corresponding to your uncongenial company. But, alas! Susie, you ought at ten years old to have more firmness, and to resolve that you won't be bored. I think I shall try to enforce it on you as a very solemn duty not to _lie_ to people as the vulgar public do. If they bore you, say so, and they'll go away. That is the right state of things.
How am I to know that _I_ don't bore you, when _I_ come, when you're so civil to people you hate?
[Footnote 11: Spanish chapel in S. Maria Novella.]
* * * * *
PASS OF BOCCHETTA, _1st October_ (1874).
* * * * * *
All that is lovely and wonderful in the Alps may be seen without the slightest danger, in general, and it is especially good for little girls of eleven who can't climb, to know this--all the best views of hills are at the bottom of them. I know one or two places indeed where there is a grand peeping over precipices, one or two where the mountain seclusion and strength are worth climbing to see. But all the entirely beautiful things I could show you, Susie; only for the very highest sublime of them sometimes asking you to endure half an hour of _chaise a porteurs_, but mostly from a post-chaise or smoothest of turnpike roads.
But, Susie, do you know, I'm greatly horrified at the penwipers of peacocks' feathers! _I_ always use my left-hand coat-tail, indeed, and if only I were a peacock and a pet of yours, how you'd scold me!
Sun just coming out over sea (at Sestri), which is sighing in towards the window, within your drive, round before the door's breadth of it,[12] seen between two masses of acacia copse and two orange trees at the side of the inn courtyard.
[Footnote 12: That is, within that distance of the window.--J. R.]
* * * * *
GENEVA, _19th October_ (1874).
How I have been neglecting you! Perhaps Joanie may have told you that just at my last gasp of hand-work, I had to write quite an unexpected number of letters. But poor Joanie will think herself neglected now, for I have been stopped among the Alps by a state of their glaciers entirely unexampled, and shall be a week after my "latest possible" day, in getting home. It is eleven years since I was here, and very sad to me to return, yet delightful with a moonlight paleness of the past, precious of its kind.
I shall be at home with Joan in ten days now, God willing. I have much to tell you, which will give you pleasure and pain; but I don't know how much it will be--to tell you--for a little while yet, so I don't begin.
* * * * *
OXFORD, _26th October_ (1874).
Home at last with your lovely, most lovely, letter in my breast pocket.
I am so very grateful to you for not writing on black paper.
Oh, dear Susie, why should we ever wear black for the guests of God?
* * * * *
WHARFE IN FLOOD.
BOLTON ABBEY,
_24th January, 1875_.
The black rain, much as I growled at it, has let me see Wharfe in flood; and I would have borne many days in prison to see that.
No one need go to the Alps to see wild water. Seldom unless in the Rhine or Rhone themselves at their rapids, have I seen anything much grander. An Alpine stream, besides, nearly always has its bed full of loose stones, and becomes a series of humps and dumps of water wherever it is shallow; while the Wharfe swept round its curves of shore like a black Damascus saber, coiled into eddies of steel. At the Strid, it had risen eight feet vertical since yesterday, sheeting the flat rocks with foam from side to side, while the treacherous mid-channel was filled with a succession of boiling domes of water, charged through and through with churning white, and rolling out into the broader stream, each like a vast sea wave bursting on a beach.
There is something in the soft and comparatively unbroken slopes of these Yorkshire shales which must give the water a peculiar sweeping power, for I have seen Tay and Tummel and Ness, and many a big stream besides, savage enough, but I don't remember anything so grim as this.
I came home to quiet tea and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped half my cream jugful (and yet I had plenty) sitting on my shoulder,--and Life of Sir Walter Scott. I was reading his great Scottish history tour, when he was twenty-three, and got his materials for everything nearly, but especially for Waverley, though not used till long afterwards.
Do you recollect Gibbie Gellatly? I was thinking over that question of yours, "What did I think?"[13] But, my dear Susie, you might as well ask Gibbie Gellatly what _he_ thought. What does it matter what any of us think? We are but simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very inconsistent and wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the ashes, perhaps--but for the next world! Why don't you ask your squirrel what _he_ thinks too? The great point--the one for all of us--is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to crack our nuts innocently through winter and rough weather.
I shall post this to-morrow as I pass through Skipton or any post-worthy place on my way to Wakefield. Write to Warwick. Oh me, what places England had, when she was herself! Now, rail stations mostly. But I never can make out how Warwick Castle got built by that dull bit of river.
[Footnote 13: Of the things that shall be, hereafter.--J. R.]
* * * * *
"FRONDES."
WAKEFIELD, _25th January, 1875_.
Here's our book in form at last, and it seems to me just a nice size, and on the whole very taking. I've put a touch or two more to the preface, and I'm sadly afraid there's a naughty note somewhere. I hope you won't find it, and that you will like the order the things are put in.
Such ill roads as we came over to-day, I never thought to see in England.
* * * * *
CASTLETON, _26th January, 1875_.
Here I have your long dear letter. I am very thankful I can be so much to you. Of all the people I have yet known, you are the only one I can find complete sympathy in; you are so nice and young without the hardness of youth, and may be the best of sisters to me. I am not so sure about letting you be an elder one; I am not going to be lectured when I'm naughty.
I've been so busy at _wasps_ all day coming along, having got a nice book about them. It tells me, too, of a delightful German doctor who kept tame hornets,--a whole nest in his study! They knew him perfectly, and would let him do anything with them, even pull bits off their nest to look in at it.
Wasps, too, my author says, are really much more amiable than bees, and never get angry without cause. All the same, they have a tiresome way of inspecting one, too closely, sometimes, I think.
I'm immensely struck with the Peak Cavern, but it was in twilight.
I'm going to stay here all to-morrow, the place is so entirely unspoiled. I've not seen such a primitive village, rock, or stream, this twenty years; Langdale is as sophisticated as Pall Mall in comparison.
* * * * *
WASP STINGS.
BOLTON BRIDGE, _Saturday_.
I never was more thankful than for your sweet note, being stopped here by bad weather again; the worst of posting is that one has to think of one's servant outside, and so lose a day.
It was bitter wind and snow this morning, too bad to send any human creature to sit idle in. Black enough still, and I more than usual, because it is just that point of distinction from brutes which I truly say is our only one,[14] of which I have now so little hold.
The bee Fors[15] will be got quickly into proof, but I must add a good deal to it. I can't get into good humor for natural history in this weather.
I've got a good book on wasps which says they are our chief protectors against flies. In Cumberland the wet cold spring is so bad for the wasps that I partly think this may be so, and the terrible plague of flies in August might perhaps be checked by our teaching our little Agneses to keep wasps' nests instead of bees.
Yes, that is a pretty bit of mine about Hamlet, and I think I must surely be a little pathetic sometimes, in a doggish way.
"You're so dreadfully faithful!" said Arthur Severn to me, fretting over the way I was being ill-treated the other day by R.
Oh dear, I wish I were at Brantwood again, now, and could send you my wasp book! _It_ is pathetic, and yet so dreadful,--the wasp bringing in the caterpillar for its young wasp, stinging each enough to paralyze but not to kill, and so laying them up in the cupboard.
I wonder how the clergymen's wives will feel after the next Fors or two! I've done a bit to-day which I think will go in with a shiver. Do you recollect the curious _thrill_ there is--the cold _tingle_ of the pang of a nice deep wasp sting?
Well, I'm not in a fit temper to write to Susie to-day, clearly.
[Footnote 14: I've forgotten what it was, and don't feel now as if I had 'got hold' of _any_ one.--J. R.]
[Footnote 15: See "Fors Clavigera", Letter LI.]
* * * * *
BOLTON STRID.
I stopped here to see the Strid again--not seen these many years. It is curious that life is embittered to me, now, by its former pleasantness; while _you_ have of these same places painful recollections, but you could enjoy them now with your whole heart.
Instead of the drive with the poor over-labored one horse through the long wet day, here, when I was a youth, my father and mother brought me,[16] and let me sketch in the Abbey and ramble in the woods as I chose, only demanding promise that I should not go near the Strid. Pleasant drives, with, on the whole, well paid and pleased drivers, never with over-burdened cattle; cheerful dinner or tea waiting for me always, on my return from solitary rambles. Everything right and good for me, except only that they never put me through any trials to harden me, or give me decision of character, or make me feel how much they did for me.
But that error was a fearful one, and cost them and me, Heaven only knows how much. And now, I walk to Strid, and Abbey, and everywhere, with the ghosts of the past days haunting me, and other darker spirits of sorrow and remorse and wonder. Black spirits among the gray, all like a mist between me and the green woods. And I feel like a caterpillar,--stung _just enough_. Foul weather and mist enough, of quite a real kind besides. An hour's sunshine to-day, broken up speedily, and now veiled utterly.
[Footnote 16: In 1837.]
* * * * *
HERNE HILL, LONDON,
_11th February, 1875_.
I have your sweet letter with news of Dr. John and his brother. I have been working on the book to-day very hard, after much interruption; it is two-thirds done now. So glad people are on tiptoe.
Paddocks are frogs, not toads in that grace.[17] And why should not people smile? Do you think that God does not like smiling graces? He only dislikes frowns. But you know when once habitual, the child would be told on a cold day to say "Cold as paddocks;" and everybody would know what was coming. Finally the deep under-meaning, that as the cold hand is lifted, so also the cold heart, and yet accepted, makes it one of the prettiest little hymns I know.
I cannot tell you how very apposite to my work these two feathers are. I am just going to dwell on the exquisite result of the division into successive leaves, by which nature obtains the glittering look to set off her color; and you just send me two feathers which have it more in perfection than any I ever saw, and I think are more vivid in color.
How those boys must tease you! but you will be rewarded in the world that good Susies go to.
[Footnote 17: Herrick's. See "Fors Clavigera", Letter XLIII.]
* * * * *
HERNE HILL, _4th October_ (1875).
All your letter is delicious, but chiefest the last sentence where you say you like your Chaucer so much.--And you need never fear touching that wound of mine--It is never more--never less--without its pain. I like you to lay your pure--gentle hand on it.
But I am not despondent or beaten at all, and I'm at work on your peacock's feathers--and oh me, they should be put into some great arch of crystal where one could see them like a large rainbow--I use your dear little lens deep in and in--and can't exhaust their wonderfulness.
* * * * *
HOTEL MEURICE, PARIS,
_26th August, '76_.
I'm so very miserable just now that I can't write to you: but I don't want you to think that I am going so far away without wishing to be near you again. A fit of intense despondency coming on the top, or under the bottom, of already far-fallen fatigue leaves me helpless to-day, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. Oh dear, the one pleasant thing I've to say is that it will make me know the blessings of Brantwood and dearness of the Thwaite, twenty fold more, when I get back.
* * * * *
VENICE, _10th September, '76_.
I am a sad long way from the pretty garden steps of the Thwaite, now, yet in a way, at home, here also--having perhaps more feeling of old days at Venice than at any other place in the world, having done so much work there, and I hope to get my new "Stones of Venice" into almost as nice a form as "Frondes." I'm going to keep all that I think Susie would like, and then to put in some little bits to my own liking, and some other little bits for the pleasure of teasing, and I think the book will come out quite fresh.
I am settled here for a month at least--and shall be very thankful for Susie notes, when they cross the Alps to me in these lovely days.
Love to Mary--I wish I could have sent both some of the dark blue small Veronica I found on the Simplon!
* * * * *
VENICE, _12th September, 1876_.
I must just say how thankful it makes me to hear of this true gentleness of English gentlewomen in the midst of the vice and cruelty in which I am forced to live here, where oppression on one side and license on the other rage as two war-wolves in continual havoc.
It is very characteristic of fallen Venice, as of modern Europe, that here in the principal rooms of one of the chief palaces in the very headmost sweep of the Grand Canal there is not a room for a servant fit to keep a cat or a dog in (as Susie would keep cat or dog, at least).
* * * * *
VENICE, _18th September_ (1876).
I never knew such a fight as the good and wicked fairies are having over my poor body and spirit just now. The good fairies have got down the St. Ursula for me and given her to me all to myself, and sent me fine weather and nice gondoliers, and a good cook, and a pleasant waiter; and the bad fairies keep putting everything upside down, and putting black in my box when I want white, and making me forget all I want, and find all I don't, and making the hinges come off my boards, and the leaves out of my books, and driving me as wild as wild can be; but I'm getting something done in spite of them, only I never _can_ get my letters written.
* * * * *
VENICE, _September 29th_.
I have woeful letters telling me you also were woeful in saying good-bye. My darling Susie, what _is_ the use of your being so good and dear if you can't enjoy thinking of heaven, and what fine goings on we shall all have there?
All the same, even when I'm at my very piousest, it puts me out if my drawings go wrong. I'm going to draw St. Ursula's blue slippers to-day, and if I can't do them nicely shall be in great despair. I've just found a little cunning inscription on her bedpost, 'IN FANNTIA.' The double N puzzled me at first, but Carpaccio spells anyhow. My head is not good enough for a bedpost....Oh me, the sweet Grange!--Thwaite, I mean (bedpost again); to think of it in this mass of weeds and ruin!
* * * * *
ST. URSULA.
VENICE, _13th November_ (1876).
I have to-day your dear little note, and have desired Joan to send you one just written to her in which I have given some account of myself, that may partly interest, partly win your pardon for apparent neglect. Coming here, after practically an interval of twenty-four years,--for I have not seriously looked at anything during the two hurried visits with Joan,[18]--my old unfinished work, and the possibilities of its better completion, rise grievously and beguilingly before me, and I have been stretching my hands to the shadow of old designs and striving to fulfill shortcomings, always painful to me, but now, for the moment, intolerable.
I am also approaching the close of the sixth year of Fors, and have plans for the Sabbatical year of it, which make my thoughts active and troubled. I am drawing much, and have got a study of St. Ursula which will give you pleasure; but the pain of being separate from my friends and of knowing they miss me! I wonder if you will think you are making me too vain, Susie. Such vanity is a very painful one, for I know that you look out of the window on Sundays now, wistfully, for Joan's handkerchief. This pain seems always at my heart, with the other which is its own.
I am thankful, always, you like St. Ursula. _One_ quite fixed plan for the last year of Fors, is that there shall be absolutely no abuse or controversy in it, but things which will either give pleasure or help; and some clear statements of principle, in language as temperate as hitherto violent; to show, for one thing, that the violence was not for want of self-command.
I'm going to have a good fling at the Bishops in next Fors to finish with, and then for January!--only I mustn't be too good, Susie, or something would happen to me. So I shall say naughty things still, but in the mildest way.
I am very grateful to you for that comparison about my mind being as crisp as a lettuce. I am _so_ thankful you can feel that still. I was beginning to doubt, myself.
[Footnote 18: May 1870 and June 1872.]
* * * * *
ST. MARK'S DOVES.
VENICE, _2d December_ (1876).
I have been very dismal lately. I hope the next captain of St. George's Company will be a merrier one and happier, in being of use. I am inherently selfish, and don't enjoy being of use. And here I've no Susies nor Kathleens nor Diddies, and I'm only doing lots of good, and I'm very miserable. I've been going late to bed too. I picked myself up last night and went to bed at nine, and feel cheerful enough to ask Susie how she does, and send her love from St. Mark's doves. They're really tiresome now, among one's feet in St. Mark's Place, and I don't know what it will come to. In old times, when there were not so many idlers about, the doves were used to brisk walkers, and moved away a foot or two in front of one; but now everybody lounges, or stands talking about the Government, and the doves won't stir till one just touches them; and I who walk fast[19] am always expecting to tread on them, and it's a nuisance.
If I only had time I would fain make friends with the sea-gulls, who would be quite like angels if they would only stop on one's balcony. If there were the least bit of truth in Darwinism, Venice would have had her own born sea-gulls by this time building their nests at her thresholds.
[Footnote 19: See "Fors Clavigera", Letter LXXXII.]
* * * * *
VENICE, _11th December_ (1876).
My mouth's watering so for that Thwaite currant jelly, you can't think. I haven't had the least taste of anything of the sort this three months. These wretches of Venetians live on cigars and garlic, and have no taste in their mouths for anything that God makes nice.
The little drawing (returned) is nice in color and feeling, but, which surprises me, not at all intelligent in line. It is not weakness of hand but fault of perspective instinct, which spoils so many otherwise good botanical drawings.
Bright morning. Sickle moon just hiding in a red cloud, and the morning stars just vanished in light. But we've had nearly three weeks of dark weather, so we mustn't think it poor Coniston's fault--though Coniston _has_ faults.
* * * * *
ST. MARK'S REST.
_23d January, 1877_.
A great many lovely things happened to me this Christmas, but if I were to tell Susie of them I am sure she would be frightened out of her bright little wits, and think I was going to be a Roman Catholic. I'm writing _such_ a Catholic history of Venice, and chiseling all the Protestantism off the old "Stones" as they do here the grass off steps.
All the pigeons of St. Mark's Place send you their love. St. Ursula adds hers to the eleven thousand birds' love. And the darlingest old Pope who went a pilgrimage with her, hopes you won't be too much shocked if he sends _his_ too! (If you're not shocked, _I_ am!)
My new Catholic history of Venice is to be called "St. Mark's Rest."
* * * * *
_27th January_ (1877).
Joanie tells me you are writing her such sad little letters. How _can_ it be that any one so good and true as my Susie should be sad? I am sad, bitterly enough and often, but only with sense of fault and folly and lost opportunity such as you have never fallen into or lost. It is very cruel of Fate, I think, to make us sad, who would fain see everybody cheerful, and (cruel of Fate too) to make so many cheerful who make others wretched. The little history of Venice is well on, and will be clear and interesting, I think,--more than most histories of anything. And the stories of saints and nice people will be plenty.
Such moonlight as there is to-night, but nothing to what it is at Coniston! It makes the lagoon water look brown instead of green, which I never noticed before.
* * * * *
VENICE, _4th February, 1877_.
Your praise and sympathy do me double good, because you could not praise me so nicely and brightly without pleasure of your own. I'm always sure a Fors will be good if I feel it will please Susie;--but I can only write them now as they're given me; it all depends on what I'm about. But I'm doing a great deal just now which you will enjoy--I'm thankful to say, I know you will. St. Theodore's horse is delightful[20]--and our Venetian doggie--and some birds are coming too! This is not a letter--but just a purr.
[Footnote 20: St. Theodore had a contest with a Dragon, and his horse gave considerable help, trampling it down with its four feet. The Saint spoke first to the horse as to a man--"Oh thou horse of Christ comfort thee, be strong like a man, and come that we may conquer the contrary enemy." See "Fors," vol. vii. also "St. Mark's Rest,"]
* * * * * _