LETTERS TO MISS FRASER. 305 



' Thank you, my own kind lassie, for your long and 

 excellent letter. I wish you but knew how much I en- 

 joyed it on the first perusal and admired it on the second. 

 But, my own dearest Lydia, am I not tasking you over- 

 much? ... Do not be so careless of yourself. You are 

 already much too pale and thin, my Lydia; do not become 

 paler and thinner over the midnight oil : your mind 

 and body are not, I am afraid, very equally matched ; 

 the energies of the one wear out the powers of the 

 other; be generous, my lassie, and take part with the 

 weaker side. Write me not continuously, but just a few 

 lines now and then when you chance to be in the mood; 

 now at the grassy side of the Leap now beside the 

 beechen tree ; and that I may be able to take your 

 portrait at each sitting and to revert to the time of it, 

 state over each paragraph the localities and the hour. 

 But if I continue to lecture you in this way you will 

 care little for either writing me or hearing from me. 



4 Tell me, my Lydia, why is it that I fear so much more 

 for you than for myself ? I hold life by quite as uncer- 

 tain a tenure ; and I do not know for my constitution is 

 by no means a strong one if I be a great deal less sub- 

 ject to indisposition. But somehow sickness and death 

 do not appear half so terrible to me when in looking 

 forward I see them watching beside my own path, as 

 when I see them lurking beside yours. Do I love you 

 better than I do myself ? or does the feeling arise out of 

 one's confidence in one's own ability to resist or endure, 

 which Young describes as making " men deem all men 

 mortal but themselves ?"....! remember that when 

 on my rock excursions with parties of my schoolfellows 

 I used to leap from crag to crag with the agility of the 

 chamois, as cool and unconcerned when on the edge of 

 a precipice, as when on the level shore. If, however, I 



VOL. i. 20 



