I am not, when I speak of improvement in the art of English composition, alluding solely to the time when you wrote as follows (italics and caps your own): 

“Mr. Gatty thinks that Messrs. Fisher & Holmes has sent more than he desired he said 2s. or 2s. 6d. and he thinks there is here more than that he hopes he will answer and tell me what price the LOT is and how many plants I may take for 2s. or 2s. 6d. by return of post or by Cox which will be better Ecclesfield June 1866.”

I wouldn’t part with the original of the above under a considerable sum of money!  It always refreshes my brain to go back to it—­and I laugh as often as one laughs, and re-laughs at Pickwick!—­the way the pronouns become entangled and after making an imperfectly distinctive stand at “he said,” jump desperately to the pith of the matter in “what price the LOT is.”  All difficulties of punctuation being disposed of by the process of omitting stops entirely—­like old Hebrew—­written without points!

(What an autograph for collectors if ever you’re the “King Cole” of Liverpool!)

* * * * *

...  I have been staying with M.M.  I wish I could impart my mental gleanings.  I made several experiments on her intellect.  I tried to pin her again and again—­but QUITE without success—­or (on her part) sense of failure.  I tried to remember what she had said afterwards—­and I could not succeed.  I couldn’t carry a single sentence.

Generally speaking I gather that—­

“The Kelts are destroying themselves—­the Teuton Element MUST prevail—­one feels—­genius—­the thing—­Herr Beringer—­Dr. Zerffi—­but whatever one may FEEL—­so it is!  Every other nation COMMENCED where we LEAVE OFF.  WE BEGAN with the DRAMA and left off with the Epic—­Milton’s—­what-is-it?  But there you have Hamlet—­where do you find a character like Hamlet?—­NOWHERE!  That’s the beauty of it.  The young lady’s maid never reads anything—­but Macbeth.  ANNE I can trust with Faust.  I read Lessing myself—­and the Greek Testament (not the Epistles—­don’t let me exaggerate)—­with a bit of dry toast and a cup of tea without a saucer or anything.  I never sit down till the Easter holidays—­before breakfast—­I ought to feel—­what is it—­PROUD.  Dr. Zerffi says he’ll show A.B.’s papers at any University against the first-class men—­and they won’t understand a word of them.  What were those girls when they came?  There’s the Duchess of Somerset’s 15th coz twice removed. Its all blood. My father drove four-in-hand down this very hill in the old coaching days (!!!)—­and there’s not another school in England where the young ladies read Bopp before breakfast.  But the Vedas are a mine of—­you know what—­Sanskrit is English—­change the letters and I could make myself understood by a Parsee better than by half the young ladies of this establishment.  We’re all Indians!”