about half-past four. It was still night, but I made my
fire, which is always a delightful employment, and read
Lockhart's 'Scott' until the day began to peep. It was a
beautiful and sober dawn, a dove-coloured dawn, insensibly
brightening to gold. I was looking at it some while over the
down-hill profile of our eastern road, when I chanced to
glance northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea
lying outspread. It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I
knew the surf was roaring all along the reef, and indeed, if
I had listened, I could have heard it - and saw the white
sweep of it outside Matautu.

I am out of condition still, and can do nothing, and toil to
be at my pen, and see some ink behind me. I have taken up
again THE HIGH WOODS OF ULUFANUA. I still think the fable
too fantastic and far-fetched. But, on a re-reading, fell in
love with my first chapter, and for good or evil I must
finish it. It is really good, well fed with facts, true to
the manners, and (for once in my works) rendered pleasing by
the presence of a heroine who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty;
a fact. All my other women have been as ugly as sin, and
like Falconet's horse (I have just been reading the anecdote
in Lockhart), MORTES forbye.

News: Our old house is now half demolished; it is to be
rebuilt on a new site; now we look down upon and through the
open posts of it like a bird-cage, to the woods beyond. My
poor Paulo has lost his father and succeeded to thirty
thousand thalers (I think); he had to go down to the
Consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; got drunk, of