At Plymouth, I had a very kind and pressing invitation from Lady Elizabeth Bulteel—Lord Grey's daughter, whom I have known for some time—to go and stay at her pretty place, Flete, two miles from Plymouth; but having to come on here, I could not go to her, which I was very sorry for. She sent me the most exquisite flowers, which I brought away with me, and which are still consoling me here.
Good-bye; God bless you, my dear.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
New London Inn, Exeter, Wednesday, June 23d.
I do not plead guilty to general inconsistency, but only to particular inconsistency, in a particular instance, dear Hal.... You are quite welcome to accuse me of it, however; but as in your last letter you imply that I accept the accusation, I beg leave to state distinctly that I do not.... Not, indeed, that I make any pretensions to that order of coherency of action and opinion which is generally called consistency: my principles are few, simple, and comprehensive, and I rather desire so to embrace them with my heart, mind, and soul, that my conduct may habitually conform to them, than am careful in every instance of action to see whether I am observing them. Somebody said very well that principles were moral habits; and our habits become unconscious and spontaneous: and so I think should our consistency be, and not a sort of moral rule or measure to be applied and adjusted to each exigency as it occurs, to produce a symmetrical moral appearance.
I think one reason why I appear, and perhaps am, inconsistent is because I seldom have any consideration for expediency—what I should call secondary rules of conduct; and I have not much objection to contradicting my course of action in the present hour by that of the next, provided at each time I am endeavoring to do what seems best to me. I desire a certain frame of mind that my conduct may flow habitually from it, without constant reference to outward coherency. In the course of life-long endeavor and practice, I suppose, this may be achieved. But do not think me presumptuous if I say that I think people are generally too afraid of appearing inconsistent, too desirous to seem reasonable,—in short, more anxious upon the whole about what they do than what they are. Of course, the one will much depend upon the other; but they will match well enough without an everlasting comparison of shades of color, if they are really in harmony, and, at all events, will certainly harmonize even if they do not precisely match: there's a woman's shopping illustration for you.... Of course you will understand well enough that I have not referred to the capital inconsistency of which poor St. Paul so pathetically complained—wishing to do right and doing wrong,—nor would you have charged me individually and specially with this, alas! universal moral incoherency.
This is my holiday, and I have been spending it between two famous nursery-gardens in the neighborhood of Exeter, and the cathedral.
FLOWERS. These great gardeners send up their exquisite and precious plants to the London horticultural exhibitions, and I saw many for whose beauty and variety gold and silver medals had been awarded to their foster-father florists. The masters of both these establishments very courteously went over them with me, showing me the hot-houses where their choicest and rarest plants were kept; there were some, such exquisite and wonderful creatures, lovely to the eye, delicious to the smell—Patagonians, Javanese, from the Cordilleras, from Peru, from Chili, from Borneo,—the flower tribes of the whole earth.
Then, again, they showed me little pots of fine sand, covered with bell glasses, where the eye could hardly detect a point or shade of sickly green upon the surface,—the promise of some unique foreign flower, sent from its savage home in the forests of another hemisphere, to blossom at the Chiswick horticultural exhibition, and win medals for the careful cultivators, who have watched with faith—assuredly in this case "the evidence of things not seen"—its precarious growth and doubtful development.