236 MEMOIR OF BR. HARVEY. 



that hide many things from our knowledge. Do you ever think 

 on starlight nights of what is going on up among the stars ? and 

 that you probably will be an actor one of these days in those far- 

 off regions ? And then, what is everything that is merely con- 

 nected with the present life but a toy and a pastime. It seems 

 so, and yet I am not sure that it is so, for I suppose that what 

 appears to us in the works of nature as only ornamental has also 

 its use, and likewise these seemingly trivial matters of this life 

 may be intimately woven into our destiny in the life to come. 

 A man turned of forty- one can hardly avoid thinking of these 

 things sometimes. 



To the Same. 



Kilkenny, May 12, 1852. 

 You may wonder at the date of this letter if you ever heard 

 of the place. Asa I am sure must have, as it is associated with 

 the feline race for which he has so much partiality, " Kilkenny 

 cats" being famous for their dogged resolution. Here am I 

 living in the "house that Jack built," and giving lectures on 

 botany to the natives. Two are over, and eight are to come, so 

 that I have still a fortnight's residence before me. 



And now I have to thank you for your interesting letter 

 received the day before I left Dublin. The weather you describe 

 must have been wretched; but I suppose ere this it has 

 passed away, and spriug has come with a hop, step, and jump, 

 in regular " go-a-head fashion." Does it not burst suddenly over 

 you ? Here we have long been preparing, and are now in the 

 very greenest and freshest season of the year. 



Thanks for your report of Madame Ossoli. I am sorry you 

 did not know her personally, though I can well understand that 

 her ways may be much more pleasant on paper than they were 

 in the original acting. The book as it stands is sufficiently 

 freighted with transcendentalism ; a sort of ism which (so far as 

 I know) is much better to read of than to come in contact with. 

 Her undoubted talents — her earnestness and her romantic history 

 — give one, on reviewing her life, that toleration for her peculiar 

 opinions which I can well suppose would not be felt while their 

 utterer was living, by the majority with whose opinions they 

 clashed. So few can appreciate the romance of life before the 

 catastrophe throws a halo round the actors. 



