R. L. S.



Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL



[SWANSTON], MAY 1874, MONDAY.

WE are now at Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. The garden
is but little clothed yet, for, you know, here we are six hundred
feet above the sea. It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning.
Everything wintry. I am very jolly, however, having finished
Victor Hugo, and just looking round to see what I should next take
up. I have been reading Roman Law and Calvin this morning.

EVENING. - I went up the hill a little this afternoon. The air was
invigorating, but it was so cold that my scalp was sore. With this
high wintry wind, and the grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it
was quite wonderful to hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming up
to me out of the woods, and the bleating of sheep being shorn in a
field near the garden, and to see golden patches of blossom already
on the furze, and delicate green shoots upright and beginning to
frond out, among last year's russet bracken. Flights of crows were
passing continually between the wintry leaden sky and the wintry
cold-looking hills. It was the oddest conflict of seasons. A wee
rabbit - this year's making, beyond question - ran out from under
my feet, and was in a pretty perturbation, until he hit upon a
lucky juniper and blotted himself there promptly. Evidently this