I fancy that the comparison that you instituted between the life of the Roman and the life of the Spaniard as seen by me in these islands might be extended to a good many particulars. When, as happens for about eleven months in the year, you are not living at your finca, you occasionally pay it visits with a party of friends—male friends only—whom you entertain there. You eat a great deal and drink until you are merry—then late in the evening you drive back to town twanging a guitar, and, if you can, you sing inane verses made impromptu. Our landlord had one of these carouses the day before he handed over the house to us, and my wife's account of the state in which the house was when she entered and set some servants to scrub it is not for publication.... Is not this rather classical?

To Frederick Pollock.

Casa Peñate, Monte.
21 Jan. 1901.

Also I wonder what has gone wrong with the mails—we might be at the other end of the earth, so slow is news to reach us. A rumour came up yesterday from the ciudad which makes me reflect that I don't know for certain whether you have a queen in England or a king. And I can't go and see how all this is, for if I leave my bed, I am soon sent back there again by this blameworthy neuralgia which threatens to become what Glanvill calls morbus reseantisae. Et sic iaceo discinctus discalciatus et sine braccis ut patuit militibus comitatus qui missi fuerunt ad me videndum et qui michi dederunt diem apud Turrim Lundoniae in quindena Pasche.

So I make some progress through Spanish novels—or rather novels that have been translated into Spanish. At present I am in Resurreccion by the Conde Leon Tolstoy—which is easy. I find Perez Galdos a little too hard for my recumbent position, and dictionaries are bad bed-fellows. I have been indolently making for subsequent use a sort of Year Book grammar. I have got a pretty complete être and avoir—and really I think that the lawyers had a fair command of all the tenses—I have seen some well sustained subjunctives.

You spoke of Maine. Well, I always talk of him with reluctance, for on the few occasions on which I sought to verify his statements of fact I came to the conclusion that he trusted much to a memory that played him tricks and rarely looked back at a book that he had once read: e.g. his story about the position of the half-blood in the Law of Normandy seems to me a mere dream that is contradicted by every version of the custumal.

By the way, when you discoursed of the term "comparative Jurisprudence," had you noticed that Austin used it? I was surprised by seeing it in his book the other day. Burgenses de Cantebrige dederunt michi libertatem burgi sui honoris causa quia edidi cartas suas. Gratificatus Sum.

To John C. Gray,

Professor of Law in the University of Harvard.