What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico, which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till then....
God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from
MY DEAR EDWARD,--I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?
I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which, yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the _unction_ of their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing, lifeless, pulseless,--a rushlight in a fleshless skull.
My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the little one.
I almost despair of John's coming; but do persuade Henry if you can. I quite long to see him again.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received and acknowledge your this morning's present both as plant and symbol, and with appropriate thanks and correspondent feeling. The rose is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of our gardens; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, if not so bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep nearer to us, clothe our walls, twine over our porch, and haply peep in at our chamber window, with the crested wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to us. Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hundred varieties imitating now this now that leaf, odour, blossom of the garden, still steadily retains its own _staid_ character, its own sober and refreshing hue and fragrance. It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due attention and tenderness will live through the winter grave yet cheerful, as an old family friend, that makes up for the departure of gayer visitors, in the leafless season. But none of these are the _myrtle_![203] In none of these, nor in all collectively, will the _myrtle_ find a substitute. All together and joining with them all the aroma, the spices, and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they be a sad exchange for the _myrtle_! Oh, precious in its sweetness is the _rich_ innocence of its snow-white blossoms! And dear are they in the remembrance; but these may pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own myrtle plant remains unchanged, its blossoms are remembered the more to endear the faithful bearer; yea, they survive invisibly in every _more than_ fragrant leaf. As the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning murmurs of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who has once possessed and prized a genuine _myrtle_ will rather _remember_ it under the cypress tree than seek to _forget_ it among the rose bushes of a paradise.
