...My life runs on in the same canal. A walk before breakfast round the parallelogram formed by the Pont de Solferino at one end and the Pont des Arts at the other, then a walk after breakfast with John up to the Pont Neuf and across to the courtyard of the Tuileries where we sit and collogue over our cigars, feeding the sparrows between whiles; then home, and John to Schiller’s Thirty Years’ War and I to my Old French. In the dusk I generally take a longer walk by myself, or else the same one with John. I have got a whole closet full of books, and have reached the end of my tether, having just received an account from the Barings showing that I have overdrawn £104. However, the books are a kind of investment. But I begin to foresee that I shall not stay abroad so long as I expected. I thought I was all right now, but as usual my income is never so large as my auguries. Fortunately, I like Cambridge better than any other spot of the earth’s surface, and if I can only manage to live there shall be at ease yet....
To the Same.
Paris, 18 March, 1873.
...I shall probably be in England before you go, for Hughes writes me (this is between ourselves) that there is a chance of their giving me a D. C. L. at Oxford, which I should like. I am not, I think, overfond of decorations, but I should like this one, for I cannot get over a superstitious respect for what goes into the college triennial catalogue.
To Thomas Hughes.
Paris, 19 March, 1873.
...What you say of the quiet lives that would come to the front in England in a time of stress, I believe to be true of us also. I cannot think such a character as Emerson’s—one of the simplest and noblest I have ever known—a freak of chance, and I hope that my feeling that the country is growing worse is nothing more than men of my age have always felt when they looked back to the tempus actum.... If I had dreamed you would have run over to Paris, wouldn’t I have told you where I was! But, in fact, I have lingered on here from week to week aimlessly, having come abroad to do nothing, and having thus far succeeded admirably.
To Leslie Stephen.
Paris, 29 April, 1873.
...I think I have made up my mind to run over to London for a day or two, to bid the Nortons good-by, for I cannot bear to have the sea between us before I see them again. If I do, I shall arrive about the 7th of May, and I shall count on seeing you as much as possible.... I have read your “Are we Christians?” and liked it, of course, because I found you in it, and that is something that will be dear to me so long as I keep my wits. I think I should say that you lump shams and conventions too solidly together in a common condemnation. All conventions are not shams by a good deal, and we should soon be Papuans without them. But I dare say I have misunderstood you.