undeniable talent and faculty, combined with high and pure aspiration. A
clever book, a graceful book, and with the moral grace besides--thank
you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.

At the same time, precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you,
I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of
view--accepting his own view of the situation, which I, for one, cannot
accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather
conventional on the subject of his marriage. I don't in the least
understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first
volume; no, not in the least. It was a matter of income, he would tell
me, and of keeping two establishments; and I would answer that it ought
rather to have been a matter of faith in God and in the value of God's
gifts, the greatest of which is love. I am romantic about love--oh, much
more than you are, though older than you. A man's life does not develop
rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often
appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act. Your Ninian was a man
before he was a brother. I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a
great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family,
however he made it out. He should have said: 'God gives me this gift, He
will find me energy to work for it and suffer for it. We will all live
together, struggle together if it is necessary, a little more poorly, a
little more laboriously, but keeping true to the best aims of life, all
of us.'

That's what _my_ Ninian would have said. I don't like to see noble
Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic
motives--not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?

I must tell you that Mrs. Jameson, who is staying in this house, read