Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



DUNBLANE, FRIDAY, 5TH MARCH 1872.

MY DEAR BAXTER, - By the date you may perhaps understand the
purport of my letter without any words wasted about the matter. I
cannot walk with you to-morrow, and you must not expect me. I came
yesterday afternoon to Bridge of Allan, and have been very happy
ever since, as every place is sanctified by the eighth sense,
Memory. I walked up here this morning (three miles, TU-DIEU! a
good stretch for me), and passed one of my favourite places in the
world, and one that I very much affect in spirit when the body is
tied down and brought immovably to anchor on a sickbed. It is a
meadow and bank on a corner on the river, and is connected in my
mind inseparably with Virgil's ECLOGUES. HIC CORULIS MISTOS INTER
CONSEDIMUS ULMOS, or something very like that, the passage begins
(only I know my short-winded Latinity must have come to grief over
even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is just such a
cavern as Menalcas might shelter himself withal from the bright
noon, and, with his lips curled backward, pipe himself blue in the
face, while MESSIEURS LES ARCADIENS would roll out those cloying
hexameters that sing themselves in one's mouth to such a curious
lifting chant.

In such weather one has the bird's need to whistle; and I, who am
specially incompetent in this art, must content myself by