exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau’s and once allowed me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him.  She does not object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to annihilation.  I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class, does seem to me as wonderful as possible.  Who would put away one of those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire’s wrinkles of wit—­even Voltaire?  I can read book after book of such reading—­or could!  And if her principle were carried out, there would be an end!  Death would be deader from henceforth.  Also it is a wrong selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession, because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now.  Dust to dust, and soul-secrets to humanity—­there are natural heirs to all these things.  Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the idea of publicity on any terms—­not that I would not myself destroy papers of mine which were sacred to me for personal reasons—­but then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue—­nor would I, as a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an example to other minds and acts, I hope.

How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it!  Why not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in combination with such large faculty as we must admit there?  Lord Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl you mention—­which I did not remember:  and in fact, all the great work done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to trifle—­do you not think so?  When a man makes a principle of ’never losing a moment,’ he is a lost man.  Great men are eager to find an hour, and not to avoid losing a moment.  ‘What are you doing’ said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground—­’Only a little algebra,’ said she.  People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation.  Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer.  Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime I should choose—­who do things quite as trifling without the utility—­and even your Seigneurie peradventure....  I stop there for fear of growing impertinent.  The argumentum ad hominem is apt to bring down the argumentum ad baculum, it is as well to remember in time.