Letter to William Allingham, 26th Aug. 1877.
I hope that this letter may be sent on to you in some delicious nook where your dear wife is by your side preparing to make us all richer with store of new sketches. I almost fear that I am implying unbecoming claims in asking you to send me a word or two of news about your twofold, nay, fourfold self. But you must excuse in me a presumption which is simply a feeling of spiritual kinship, bred by reading in the volume you gave me before we left town.
That tremendous tramp—"Life, Death; Life, Death"[31] —makes me care the more, as age makes it the more audible to me, for those younger ones who are keeping step behind me.
Letter to Professor Kaufmann, 12th Oct. 1877.
I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to know that your stirring article on "Daniel Deronda" is now translated into English by a son of Professor Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that in this case you will not be made to wince severely.
In waiting to send you this news, I seem to have deferred too long the expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew translations of Lessing and the collection of Hebrew poems—a kindness which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the gift of his work.
I see by your last letter that your Theological Seminary was to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of mine will reach you when you are in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to teaching the world through books; and I have often wished that I had such a means of having fresh, living spiritual children within sight.
One can hardly turn one's thought towards Eastern Europe just now without a mingling of pain and dread, but we mass together distant scenes and events in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune than on us in England.
Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me to offer you his best regards.
Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby, 17th Oct. 1877.