Читать книгу Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters онлайн

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April 21st, 1858.

To Mrs. Howitt.

My dearest Mrs. Howitt,

How glorious this weather is! To-day I saw, in a little back street near Soho, two little golden-haired children, leaning out of a window in the early sunlight, gazing intently into a bird’s cage, hanging on the wall;—the poor little prisoner singing as if his little heart would break. Just so, I thought, the children here may want us; but we must break our hearts in longing for the distant glories of hill and wood. In a moment, one felt that it ought rather to teach that even here Spring brought joys—that we have visions and witnesses of brighter lands and fairer lives than we can see around us.

Derwent Bank,

July 4th, 1858.

To a Friend.

To me the whole world is so full of things crying out to be done, each one of which would be sufficient for a lifetime’s heart and thought, I think. In fact each work seems to be interesting in almost exact proportion to the amount I can devote to it, capable of infinite expansion in breadth or depth. For my part I would always rather choose the latter, would rather take up wholly a few individuals or pictures or books, and love and know and study them deeply, than have any more superficial (though wider) sympathies; and my trial is, and has always been, that I have to tear myself away from this intense grasp and absorbing interest, to love and know and help in fresh and fresh directions. I have often felt like a perpetually uprooted plant. Only somehow in looking back, I find continuity and deep inner relation between the various works and times of my life, and always find the past a possession because in memory I have it still....