“Trieste, Aug. 17,1871.
“About half an hour after your pleasant letter and its handsome enclosure reached me, Langford came in. He was on his way to Venice, but, like a good fellow, stopped to dine with myself and daughter.
“We are delighted with him,—not only with his talk about books and writers, Garrick men and reviewers, but with his fine fresh-hearted appreciation of all he sees in his tour. He likes everything, and travels really to enjoy it.
“I wish I knew how to detain him here a little longer; though, God knows, no place nor no man has fewer pretensions to lay an embargo on any one.
“I took him out to see Miramar last evening, and we both wished greatly you had been with us. It was a cool drive of some miles along the Adriatic, with the Dalmatian mountains in front, and to the westward the whole Julian Alps snow-topped and edged. I know you would have enjoyed it.
“I am so glad you like the O’Ds. As I grow older I become more and more distrustful of all I do; in fact, I feel like the man who does not know when he draws on his banker that he may not have overdrawn his account and have his cheque returned. This is very like intellectual bankruptcy, or the dread of it, which is much the same.
“The finest part of Scott’s nature to my thinking was the grand heroic spirit—that trumpet-stop on his organ—which elevated our commonplace people and stirred the heart of all that was high-spirited and generous amongst us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and sensationalism—detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance.
“This was the tone I wanted to see praised and recommended, and I was sorry to see how little it was touched on. The very influence that a gentleman exerts in society on a knot of inferiors was the sort of influence Scott brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that there was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or shabby should be exhibited.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Aug. 28, 1871.