TO REV. LEWIS CAMPBELL.

                                                                           Glenlair, 7th August 1857.

     I got your letter yesterday. I have oftener corresponded with people I expected to see than with those I had just    left, so you must excuse my being rather more glad of it than if I had expected it. So you were better than I took   you for; put that in the Logic-mill and grind it by "Conversion of Props." Since you left I have been stirring up old   correspondents. Poor W—— is "himself again," with not many to care about him. He could not keep the A——    youths in order, and tried to get his authority backed by the big authorities. Then I suppose ensued a struggle   between bodily weakness and hesitation, and mental sternness, stubbornness, and conscientiousness. The result   probably was something severe in substance and mild in manner, or otherwise open to scorn from the youths.—I  don't know, but he has resigned his place. The youths then proceeded to express their penitence, and the    authorities their regret. But he is now taking private pupils for that seat . . . of learning, with not more friends and   friendliness than  of old. Not exactly. I am glad to hear of his knowing some mathematical men, actuaries,
etc., and corresponding with them, and he is much more friendly by the post than by speech and face.

     Yesterday we did our Castle-Douglas, and round by Greenlaw (Gordon, Esq.) Old Greenlaw impounded us at   once, and embarked us in his boat down to Threave Castle, where some falsified antiquity, and some apart behind  thick woven thorns bathed in the black water of Dee.

     Then back to dinner with another party of chance visitors, songs both of the drawing-room and the quire and the  cotton fields, and, to conclude, the unpremeditated hop.

     The thing was not destitute of its humours. Old Greenlaw, heir of entail, with charters in his bedroom belonging to   "Young Lochinvar" his forbear, and various Douglases, with rights of pit and gallows, and other curious privileges,  sending all his people and visitors neck and heels in the very best direction for themselves. Son and  daughter—mild, indefatigable, generally useful, doing (at home) exactly as they are bid. One gay litter(ar)y widow,    charming never so wisely, with her hair about her ears and her elbows on her knees, on a low stool, talking  Handel, or Ruskin, or Macaulay, or general pathos of unprotected female, passing off into criticism, witticism, pleasantry, unmitigated slang, sporting, and betting.

One little Episcopal chaplain, a Celt, whom I see often, but do not quite fathom—that is, I don't know how far he   respects and how far he is amused with his most patronising friends. One, mathematical teacher   somewhere,—friend to chaplain. Voice. Mild, good fellow, like a grown up chorister, quite modest about   everything except his voice—"What will they say in England," "The Standard Bearer," "Oh Susannah" (Chaplain   leads chorus), "Courtin' down in Tenessee" (Chaplain obligato), "Yet once more" (Handel), "But who may abide"  (do.), and so on.

     One good old widow lady, with manners. One son to d°,—sanguine temperament, open countenance, very much   run to nose, brain inactive, probably fertile in military virtue. Two daughters to d°,—healthy, physical force   girls, brains more developed owing to their not having escaped in the form of nose.

     Now, conceive the Voice set down beside one of the physical forces, and trying to interest her in the capacities of   different rooms for singing in, she being more benevolent and horsefleshy than technically musical,—the Chaplain   entertaining the other with an account of his solitary life in his rooms,—old Greenlaw hospitably entreating the    mannerly widow, and trying to get the Nose to talk.

     The young widow fixed on Colin, and informed him that if Solomon were to reappear with all his wisdom, as well   as his glory, he would yet have to learn the polka; and that the mode of feasting adopted by the Incas of Peru   reminded her strongly of a custom prevalent among the Merovingian race of kings of France.

     Living in the Pampas she regarded as an enviable lot, and she was at a loss to know the best mode of studying  Euclid for the advantage of being able to teach a young brother of six (years old).

     So we did not get home till near 11, and I had to be up at Glenlair at 5 this morning, the result of which is that at    12 to-night I am a little sleepy. Johnny can swim across the big pool at the Chapel, all by himself. His taste of   water through the nose did him great good. . . . I have had some races after stones down the water in Loch Roan  I have kept the stone in sight a good way, but it has always beaten me. I'll try some broken crockery to begin  with.

     I have succeeded in establishing the existence of an error in my Saturnian mazes, but I have not detected it yet. I   have finished the first part of the Réligion Naturelle. I am not a follower of those who believe they know what   perfection must imply, and then make a deity to that pattern; but it is very well put, and carries one through, though    if the book belongs to this age at all, it is eminently unlike most books of this century in England. But I only know   one other book of French argument on the positive (not positiviste) side, and that also worked by
"demonstration." My notion is, that reason, taste, and conscience are the judges of all knowledge, pleasure, and   action, and that they are the exponents not of a code, but of the unwritten law, which they reveal as they judge by   it in presence of the facts. The facts must be witnessed to by the senses, and cross-examined by the intellect, and  not unless everything is properly put on record and proved as fact, will any question of law be resolved at   headquarters.

     We are only going through our Lehrjahr in the knowledge of Perfection, and we may have a Wanderjahr to   complete even after getting the first diploma, which is a certificate of having eyes to see the work, a conscience to   feel after Right, and faith to believe in the Word, and to reach a station thereby where both those eyes and that   conscience may be satisfied, or at least appeased. I do not think it is doing Reason, etc. any injustice to say that   rough dead facts are the necessary basis on which to work in order to elicit the living truth, not from the facts, but
either from the utterer of facts or the giver of Reason, which two are one, or Reason would never decipher facts.

          For know, whatever was created needs
          To be sustained and fed. Of elements
          The grosser feeds the purer, etc.
          —— various degrees
          Of substance, and in things that live, of life
          Meanwhile enjoy
          Your fill what happiness this happy state
          Can comprehend, incapable of more.