“Heath House, Stapleton, Bristol,
“17th August, 1871.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“That is to say falsest of woman-kind! You have cruelly jilted me. Florry wrote to say you were coming here as you ought to have done long ago. Well, as your countryman, Ossian, or his double, Macpherson, says, ‘Age is dark and unlovely,’ and therefore the rival of the American Giantess turns a broad back upon me. I must submit to my fall....
“Though I take in the Echo, I have not lately seen any article which I could confidently attribute to your pen.
“I have, however, been much gratified with your article on The Devil, the only writing I ever read on the origin of evil which did not appear to me absolutely contemptible. Talking of these matters, Coleridge said to Thelwall (ex relatione Thelwall), ‘God has all the power that is, but there is no power over a contradiction expressed or implied.’ Your suggestion that the existence of evil is due to contradiction, is, I have no doubt, very just, but my stupid head is this morning quite unable to put on paper what is foggily floating in my mind, and so I leave it.
“I spent a good part of yesterday morning in reading the Westminster Review of Walt Whitman’s works, which quite laid hold of me.
“Most truly yours,
“M. D. Hill.”
Another interesting person whom I first came to know at Bristol, (where he visited at the Deanery and at Dr. Symonds’ house,) was the late Master of Balliol. I have already cited some kind letters from him referring to our plans for Incurables and Workhouse Girls. I will be vain enough to quote here, with the permission of the friend to whom they were addressed, some of his remarks about my Intuitive Morals and Broken Lights; and also his opinion of Theodore Parker, which will interest many readers:—