A thunderstorm has just broken over the valley of the Rhine, and the dread artillery of heaven comes pealing down from the "Lurlie" like a chorus of demons in a mod-era opera. Our excursion being impossible, I once more resume my task, and again seat myself to hold communion with my dearest Kitty.
I find, besides, innumerable questions still unanswered in your last dear letter. You ask me if, on the whole, I am happier than I was at Dodsborough? How could you ever have penned such a quaere? The tone of seriousness which you tell me of, in my letters, admits perhaps of a softer epithet May it not be that soul-kindled elevation that comes of daily association with high intelligences? If I were but to tell you the names of the illustrious writers and great thinkers whom we meet here almost every evening, Kitty, you would no longer be amazed at the soaring flight my faculties have taken. Not that they appear to us, my dearest friend, in the mystic robes of science, but in the humble garb of common life, playing "groschen" whist, or a game of tric-trac. Just fancy, if you can, Professor Faraday playing "petits jeux," or Wollaston engaged at "hunt the slipper."
These are the intimacies, this the kind of intercourse, which imperceptibly cultivate the mind, and enlarge the understanding; for, as Mrs. Gore Hampton beautifully observes, "The charm of high-bred manner is not to be acquired by attendance on a 'levee' or a 'drawing-room,' it is imbibed in the atmosphere that pervades a court, in the daily, hourly association with that harmonious elegance that surrounds a sovereign." So, dearest Kitty, from intercourse with great minds is there a perpetual gain to our stock of knowledge. "They are," as Mrs. G. says, "the charged machines from which the electric sparks of genius are eternally disengaging themselves." What a privilege to be the receivers!
There is a wondrous charm, too, in their simplicity, as well as in that habit they have of mystically connecting the most trivial topics with the most astounding speculations. A fairy tale becomes to _them_ a metaphysical allegory. You would scarcely credit what curious doctrines of socialism lie veiled under "Jack the Giant Killer," or that the Marquis of Carabas, in the tale of "Puss in Boots," is meant to illustrate the oppression of the landed aristocracy. Nor is this all, Kitty; but they go further, and they are always speculating on something beyond the actual catastrophe of a story; as, the other evening, I heard a learned argument to show that had Bluebeard not been killed, he would have inevitably formed an alliance with "Sister Anne," just for the sake of supporting the cause of "marriage with a deceased wife's sister." I only mention these as passing instances of that rich Imaginative fertility which is as much their characteristic as is their wonderful power of argumentation.