1839-40. MARVELLOUS PROCESSION. 237 



sergeant-at-arms could catch none of the members, or tell 

 whither they had gone. In these circumstances, I contented 

 myself with sending you the proceeds of another night's business, 

 in the ' bill for the better regulation of time.' 



"You will not, however, think that I have forgotten you. 

 My thoughts at present move round in a narrow circle, of which 

 you are one of the great elements. Since January I have been 

 out nowhere, except at considerable intervals to see Miss 

 Abernethy, so that no foreign affections have come in to invade 

 the sanctity and integrity of home-love. I have abstained from 

 writing, very much with the hope of seeing you very soon. For 

 example, I read the other day expressly for your sake, a work on 

 the use of artificial light, from which I would have copied out 

 passages for your benefit, had not I looked to see you very soon. 

 But we soon shall see each other ' face to face,' and this and 

 other matters thought about for your sake will come out one by 

 one as occasion serves. 



"Do you remember a certain production of your schoolboy 

 days, a painted procession of men of all nations, journeying to- 

 wards some central goal, some mysterious and unpainted limit, 

 which was left for the imagination to scheme out for itself, be- 

 ing too great to be squeezed into the narrow space of pasteboard 

 dedicated to the marching of the wondrous host ? I remember 

 well the delight I used to feel in watching your deft (not daft) 

 pencil designing, with a curiosa felicitas, the assembled hordes 

 of all nations, and peoples, and kindreds, and tongues. No Mil- 

 tonic pageant of warrior angels marching to battle, or school-read 

 history of the 10,000 Greeks retreating from treacherous foes to 

 their native land, or Elgin marbles, with their noble men figures, 

 and wild, unearthly, snorting horses, nor anything else I have 

 read or seen of mock or solemn procession, ever affected me more 

 than that same strange pilgriming host of yours. Marry ! history, 

 grave and gay, waxes dim, when compared with that hieroglyphic 

 chronicle. The strange men, with uncouth dresses and wild 

 looks, who bestrode great serpents ; the cars of victory, drawn 

 by wild antelopes ; the wild boars tamed down into beasts of 

 burden; the bloody panthers chained, as of old, to Bacchus's 

 chariot, all these, and a thousand other forms, come back on mo 



