impious follies and stupidities that a thousand letters like this
could not suffice even to catalogue them?"
==

Since first coming to the North in September, 1873,
Mr. Lanier had been separated from his family. The two happy months with them
after his visit to Florida was followed by several other briefer visits.
The winters of 1874-75 and 1875-76 found him still in Baltimore,
playing at the Peabody, pursuing his studies and writing the "Symphony",
the "Psalm of the West", the "Cantata", and some shorter poems,
with a series of prose descriptive articles for `Lippincott's Magazine'.
In the summer of 1876 he called his family to join him at West Chester, Pa.
This was authorized by an engagement to write the Life of Charlotte Cushman.
The work was begun, but the engagement was broken two months later,
owing to the illness of the friend of the family who was to provide
the material from the mass of private correspondence.

Following this disappointment a new cold was incurred,
and his health became so much impaired that in November
the physicians told him he could not expect to live longer than May,
unless he sought a warmer climate. About the middle of December
he started with his wife for the Gulf coast, and visited Tampa, Fla.,
gaining considerable benefit from the mild climate. In April he ventured
North again, tarrying through the spring with his friends in Georgia;
and, after a summer with his own family in Chadd's Ford, Pa.,
a final move was ventured in October to Baltimore as home.
Here he resumed his old place in the Peabody orchestra,
and continued to play there for three winters.

The Old English studies which he had pursued with such deep delight,