To-day we have resolute rain, for the first time since we came down. You don't yet know what it is to be a sickly wretch, dependent on these skyey influences. But Heine says illness "spiritualizes the members." It had need do some good in return for one's misery.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Feb. 1866.
Thanks for your kind letter. Alas! we had chiefly bad weather in the country. George was a little benefited, but only a little. He is too far "run down" to be wound up in a very short time. We enjoyed our return to our comfortable house, and, perhaps, that freshness of home was the chief gain from our absence.
You see, to counterbalance all the great and good things that life has given us beyond what our fellows have, we hardly know now what it is to be free from bodily malaise.
After the notion I have given you of my health you will not wonder if I say that I don't know when anything of mine will appear. I can never reckon on myself.
Journal, 1866.
March 7.—I am reading Mill's "Logic" again. Theocritus still, and English History and Law.
March 17.—To St. James's Hall hearing Joachim, Piatti, and Hallé in glorious Beethoven music.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th April, 1866.
Don't think any evil of me for not writing. Just now the days are short, and art is long to artists with feeble bodies. If people don't say expressly that they want anything from me, I easily conclude that they will do better without me, and have a good weight of idleness, or, rather, bodily fatigue, which puts itself into the scale of modesty. I torment myself less with fruitless regrets that my particular life has not been more perfect. The young things are growing, and to me it is not melancholy but joyous that the world will be brighter after I am gone than it has been in the brief time of my existence. You see my pen runs into very old reflections. The fact is, I have no details to tell that would much interest you. It is true that I am going to bring out another book, but just when is not certain.