Fanny.
Howick Grange, November 14th.
Surely, my dearest Hal, the next time you say you almost despair of mankind, you should add, "in spite of God," instead of "in spite of the Pope."
I arrived here about three hours ago, and have received a most severe and painful blow in a letter from Henry Greville which I found awaiting me, containing the news of Mendelssohn's death. I cannot tell you how shocked I am at this sudden departure of so great and good a creature from amongst his impoverished fellow-beings. And when I think of that bright genius (he was the only man of genius I have known who seemed to me to fulfil the rightful moral conditions and obligations of one), by whose loss the whole civilized world is put into mourning; of his poor wife, so ardently attached to him, so tenderly and devotedly loved by him; of his children—his boy, who, I am told, inherits his sweet and amiable disposition; of my own dear sister, and poor E——, so deeply attached to him,—I cannot bear to think, I feel half stupid with pain. And yet your letter is full of other sorrow. O God! how much there is in this sorrowful life! and what suffering we are capable of! and yet—and yet—these can be but the accidents, while the sun still shines, and the beauty and consolation and virtue of nature and human life still hourly abound.
You ask me if I have written anything in Edinburgh but letters. I have hardly had leisure to write even letters. I do not know when I have worked so hard as during my last engagement there. I have hardly had an occupation or thought that was not perforce connected with my theatrical avocations. I am heartily glad it is over.
"THE VESTIGES OF CREATION." Mr. Combe has given me the "Vestiges of Creation" to read, and I have been reading it.... The book is striking and interesting, but it appears to me far from strictly logical in its great principal deduction, as far as we "human mortals" are concerned. Indeed, Mr. Combe, who thinks it most admirable, was obliged to confess that the main question of progress, involving dissimilar products from similar causes, was non-proven. And I think there are discrepancies, moreover, in minor points: but that may only be because of my profound ignorance.
The book is extremely disagreeable to me, though my ignorance and desire for knowledge combined give it, when treating of facts, a thousand times more interest than the best of novels for me; but its conclusions are utterly revolting to me,—nevertheless, they may be true.
I cannot write any more. B—— has just given me the Athenæum, with a long notice of Mendelssohn; and I am thinking more of him just now than anything else in the world....
God bless you, my dear.
I am ever yours,