“My dear Milman,—I was very sorry to miss your wife and you; but hope you are soon to be settled, and that we shall then meet often. I am well in health again, and fancy I shall be able to find some pleasure in society this winter, which was not the case last season almost at all. But neither for you nor for me will there ever be any approach to comfortable feelings, unless the mind have regular work found for it beyond the sphere of personal reflection. I wish you would make an effort for your own good, and also for mine exceedingly, by setting about an article; but I am greatly at a loss to suggest a subject. If Macaulay’s ‘Roman Lays’ be out soon, I shall look to you for a review thereof in the Christmas Number, that is, if they be worthy of his talents—which I hope and trust is to be the case.
| 214 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Our friend Fergusson is in a calm state—I rather think recovered as well as he is likely to be for many a long day. I was present at the funeral—and lived over again the hour in which you stood by me—but indeed such an hour is eternally present. After that, in every picture of life the central figure is replaced by a black blot; every train of thought terminates in the same blank gulf. I see you have been allowing yourself to dwell too near this dreary region. Escape it while the wife of your youth is still by you; in her presence no grief should be other than gentle.—Ever affectionately yours,
