i876 VISIT TO EDINBURGH 49I 



Some friends wished him to publish the paper as a con- 

 tribution to criticism ; but his own doubts as to the oppor- 

 tuneness of so doing were confirmed by a letter from Mr. 

 John Morley, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, to which 

 he replied (January 18) : — 



To say truth, most of the considerations you put so forcibly 

 had passed through my mind — but one always suspects oneself 

 of cowardice when one's own interests may be affected. 



At the beginning of May he went to Edinburgh. He 

 writes home on May 8 : — 



I am in hopes of being left to myself this time, as nobody 

 has called but Sir Alexander Grant the Principal, Crum Brown, 

 whom I met in the street just now, and Lister, who has a patient 

 in the house. I have been getting through an enormous quan- 

 tity of reading, some tough monographs that I brought with me, 

 the first volume of Forster's Life of Swift, Goodsir's Life, and a 

 couple of novels of George Sand, with a trifle of Paul Heyse. 

 You should read George Sand's Cesarine Dietrich and La Mare 

 au Diable that I have just finished. She is bigger than George 

 Eliot, more flexible, a more thorough artist. It is a queer thing, 

 by the way, that I have never read Consuelo. I shall get it here. 

 When I come back from my lecture I like to rest for an hour 

 or two over a good story. It freshens me wonderfully. 



However, social Edinburgh did not leave him long to 

 himself, but though he might thus lose something of work- 

 ing time, this loss was counterbalanced by the dispelling 

 of some of the fits of depression which still assailed him 

 from time to time. 



On May 25 he writes : — 



The General Assembly is sitting now, and I thought I would 

 look in. It was very crowded and I had to stand, so I was soon 

 spied out and invited to sit beside the Lord High Commissioner, 

 who represents the Crown in the Assembly, and there I heard an 

 ecclesiastical row about whether a certain church should be 

 allowed to have a cover with IHS on the Communion Table or 

 not. After three hours' discussion the IHSers were beaten. I 

 was introduced to the Commissioner Lord Galloway, and asked 

 to dine to-night. So I felt bound to go to the special levee at 

 Holyrood with my colleagues this morning, and I shall have to 

 go to my Lady Galloway's reception in honour of the Queen's 



