Fun, indeed!  There is very little amusement to be derived from the situation.  My opponents have a strong sense of what they call liberty—­which means that every one should have a vote, and that every one should register it in their favour.  Or they are like the old-fashioned Whigs, who had a strong belief in popular liberty, and an equally unshaken belief in their own personal superiority.—­ Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
Nov. 22, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­“Be partner of my dreams as of my fishing,” says the old fisherman to his mate, in that delicious idyll of Theocritus—­ do read it again.  It is one of the little masterpieces that hang for ever in one of the inner secret rooms of the great halls of poetry.  The two old men lie awake in their wattled cabin, listening to the soft beating of the sea, and beguiling the dark hour before the dawn, when they must fare forth, in simple talk about their dreams.  It is a genre picture, full of simple detail, but with a vein of high poetry about it; all remote from history and civic life, in that eternal region of perfect and quiet art, into which, thank God, one can always turn to rest awhile.

But to-day I don’t want to talk of fishermen, or Theocritus, or even art; I want you to share one of my dreams.

I must preface it by saying that I have just experienced a severe humiliation; I have been deeply wounded.  I won’t trouble you with the sordid details, but it has been one of those severe checks one sometimes experiences, when a mirror is held up to one’s character, and one sees an ugly sight.  Never mind that now!  But you can imagine my frame of mind.

I bicycled off alone in the afternoon, feeling very sore and miserable in spirit.  It was one of those cool, fresh, dark November days, not so much gloomy as half-lit and colourless.  There was not a breath stirring.  The long fields, the fallows, with hedges and coverts, melted into a light mist, which hid all the distant view.  I moved in a narrow twilight circle, myself the centre; the road was familiar enough to me; at a certain point there is a little lodge, with a road turning off to a farm.  It is many years since I visited the place, but I remembered dimly that there was some interest of antiquity about the house, and I determined to explore it.  The road curved away among quiet fields, with here and there a belt of woodland, then entered a little park; there I saw a cluster of buildings on the edge of a pool, all grown up with little elms and ashes, now bare of leaves.  Here I found a friendly, gaitered farmer, who, in reply to my question whether I could see the place, gave me a cordial invitation to come in; he took me to a garden door, opened it, and beckoned me to go through.  I found myself in a place of incomparable beauty.  It was a long terrace, rather wild and neglected; below there were the traces of a great, derelict garden, with thick clumps of box,