"And when I heard this I just shook with laughing till a man I knew saw me, and asked what I was laughing at, and I said, 'Because I happen to know that the male reindeer _sheds its antlers_ every year in the beginning of November, _snow shovel_ and all, and does not resume them till spring.'"!!!!!!
Curious your writing to me about Dante's Hell--and Lethe. Two books in my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE as strongly in those who have been carefully brought up apart from "religious convictions" as in those whose minds have been soaked in them). One was Flaxman's _Dante_, the other Selous's illustrations in the same style to the _Pilgrim's Progress_. I do not know whether I suffered more in my childhood than other children. Possibly, as my head was a good deal too big for my body! But I remember two troubles that haunted me. One that I should get tired of Eternity. Another that I couldn't be happy in Heaven unless I could _forget_. And in this latter connection I loved indescribably one of Flaxman's best designs. [_Sketch._] I can't remember it well enough to draw decently, but this was the attitude of Dante whom Beatrice was just laving in the Waters of Forgetfulness before they entered Paradise.
And even more fond was I of the passing of the great river by Christiana and her children, and by that mixed company of the brave and the weak, the young and the old, the gentle and the impatient,--and that grand touch by which the "Mr. Ready-to-Halt" of the long Pilgrimage crossed the waters of Death without fear or fainting.
Why should you think I should differ with Dante in his estimate of sin? I doubt if I could rearrange his Circles, except that "Lust" is a wide word, as = Passion I should probably leave it where it is; but there are hideous forms of it which are inextricably mingled, if not identical with Cruelty,--and Cruelty I should put at the lowest round of all.
We have had rather a chaff with Mr. Ellacombe (who in his ninety-first year is as keen a gardener as ever!) because he has many strange sorts of _Fritillary_, and when I told him I had seen and gone wild over a sole-coloured pale yellow one which I saw exhibited in the Horticultural Gardens, he simply put me down--"No, my dear, there's no such thing; there's a white Fritillary I can show you outside, and there's _Fritillaria Lutea_ which is yellow and spotted, but there's no such plant as you describe." Still it evidently made him restless, and he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him _shaves_ about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to describe a white Crown Imperial--a thing that has _never been_!" Later he announced--"I have written to Barr and Sugden--'Gentlemen! Here's another White Elephant. A lady has seen a sole-coloured Yellow Fritillary!'"