possible, to increase it by the modest contribution of my own store. If
so, I must guard it from all disturbance; and poetry enables me to do
this, gives me a thousand springs of joy, in none of which there is one
drop of bitterness--and thank God for that!

We are here in the I. of Wight, busy comparing it with the I. of Man,
of course. It is really a beautiful island, not merely as regards
richness of vegetation, an ornament that just now is not available, but
also for its configuration. The "lay of the land," the attitude, and
gesture of the lines are admirable. The coast is dismally inferior to
ours; glens are not to be seen, and streams are puny, but very clean. On
the whole we give the preference to Mona, and that upon purely æsthetic,
not patriotic, grounds.

I hope you are all well and thriving. Accept my best wishes for the New
Year. Your satire discloses perhaps a slight biliary secretion--all
satire, I fear, is bile. I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities
rather than to any permanent disorder!

P.S.--I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them....

* * * * *

I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank
deep draughts of--don't know how to describe it--that social brewage
which I get nowhere else. Very likely other people get it in their own
habitats. But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was
quivering and trembling all over with _stories_--they are like leaves on
a tree. The people are always telling them to one another, and any
morning or evening you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable