The ball must have been a grand sight, but I think, judging from the list, that your dress as Thomas the Rhymer stands out in marked individuality. Nothing shows more how few people are at all original than the absence of any thing striking or quaint in most of the characters assumed at a Fancy Ball. This, however, is Pampering the Pride of you members of the Mutual Admiration Society. You must not become cliquish—no not Ye Yourselves!!!!
Above all you must never lose that gracious quality (for which I have so often given you a prize) of patience and sympathy with small musicians and jangling pianos in the houses of kind and hospitable Philistines. Besides, I like you to be largely gracious and popular. All the same I confess that it is a grievance that music (and sherry!) are jointly regarded as necessary to be supplied by all hosts and hostesses—whether they can give you them good or not! People do not cram their bad drawings down your throats in similar fashion, Still what is, is—and Man is more than Music—and I have never felt the real mastership you hold in music more than when you have beaten a march out of some old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R—— petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!! I have heard enough good playing to be able to gauge him!...
Incapacity for every other kind of effort is giving me leisure for a feast of reading and re-reading such as I have not indulged for years. Amongst other things I have read for the first time Black's Strange Adventures of a Phaeton—it is very charming indeed, and if you haven't read it, some time you should. As a rule I detest German heroes to English books, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and the refrain outbreaks of his jealousy are really high art, when he unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif—"but that young man of Twickenham—he is a most pitiful fellow—" you feel Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. But Black has very artistically managed his hero's idioms so as to give great effect. And as we have a brain wave on about Womanhood you may like, as much as I have, V. Rosen's sketch of English women (to whom he gives the palm over those of other nations). Speaking of some others—"very nice to look at perhaps, and very charming in their ways perhaps, but not sensible, honest, frank like the English woman, and not familiar with the seriousness of the world, and not ready to see the troubles of other people. But your English-woman who is very frank to be amused, and can enjoy herself when there is a time for that, who is generous in time of trouble and is not afraid, and can be firm and active and yet very gentle, and who does not think always of herself, but is ready to help other people, and can look after a house and manage affairs—that is a better kind of woman I think—more to be trusted—more of a companion—oh, there is no comparison!"
It is very good, isn't it?—and he is mending the fire during this outburst, and keeps piling coal on coal as he warms with his subject.
I must also just throw you two quotations from Macaulay's most interesting Life and Letters. Quotations within quotations, for they are extracts.
"Antoni Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true."
(Browning.)
"There is na workeman
That can both worken wel and hastilie
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie."
(Chaucer.)