LETTER FROM WALT WHITMAN. 253

son talked of Walt Whitman. He mentioned Niagara Falls as being to him an inducement to cross the

ocean.

Through a friend's suggestion (Mrs. Williams, a lady who has executed some charming pictures), the Gilchrists visited Hampstead, and finally bought a house

there.

To William Rossetti, November 25, Anne Gilchrist writes:-"The very morning after I saw you, I had a very interesting letter from Walt Whitman, and what I think (and you will too) very precious, a little map on which he has traced in blue ink all the wanderings of his youth, and in red his recent journey to the Rocky Mountains." The Poet says:-" Wonders, revelations I would not have missed for my life, the great central area 2,000 miles square, the Prairie States the real America, I find-and I find that I was not realizing it before." In the postscript of this letter Walt Whitman says: "Lived a couple of weeks on the Great Plains

-800 miles wide, flat, the greatest curiosity of all. Fifty years from now this region will have a hundred millions of people, the most comfortable, advanced and democratic on the globe; indeed, it is all this and here that America is for."

December the tenth Anne Gilchrist writes to Frederick Holland, of Concord:-"How does England seem to me after my long absence and fresh experience? A land of strange contrasts and paradoxes so great and so small, so old and so young, so sunless and misty, often murky. Yet rich in beauty and depth of tone; so stuffed and crammed with swarms of rude, ignorant, I

LETTER FROM WALT WHITMAN. 253

son talked of Walt Whitman. He mentioned Niagara Falls as being to him an inducement to cross the

ocean.

Through a friend's suggestion (Mrs. Williams, a lady who has executed some charming pictures), the Gilchrists visited Hampstead, and finally bought a house

there.

To William Rossetti, November 25, Anne Gilchrist writes:-"The very morning after I saw you, I had a very interesting letter from Walt Whitman, and what I think (and you will too) very precious, a little map on which he has traced in blue ink all the wanderings of his youth, and in red his recent journey to the Rocky Mountains." The Poet says:-" Wonders, revelations I would not have missed for my life, the great central area 2,000 miles square, the Prairie States the real America, I find-and I find that I was not realizing it before." In the postscript of this letter Walt Whitman says: "Lived a couple of weeks on the Great Plains -800 miles wide, flat, the greatest curiosity of all. Fifty years from now this region will have a hundred millions of people, the most comfortable, advanced and democratic on the globe; indeed, it is all this and here that America is for."

December the tenth Anne Gilchrist writes to Frederick Holland, of Concord:-"How does England seem to me after my long absence and fresh experience? A land of strange contrasts and paradoxes so great and so small, so old and so young, so sunless and misty, often murky. Yet rich in beauty and depth of tone; so stuffed and crammed with swarms of rude, ignorant, I

fear I must say brutalized people: brutalized by ignorance, poverty and squalor-by the worst possible physical conditions of life, present and inherited; people such as you have a few thousands of in your cities, but none at all spread over the land, and those in the cities with better chance of emerging. But teeming too is old England still with a race of indomitable workers, of sturdy intellect, sturdy character, not to be beaten in the race, be it for knowledge, wealth or power; a people that will go on fighting the battle of progress a good while yet, labouring along under a stupendous load of difficulties and encumbrances inherited from the past; also with a very rich heritage, tangible and intangible, from that same Past. And, to come down from my high horse, how bitter cold and foggy it is!-the cold so damp and raw. Don't you Americans grumble about your climate, for it is splendid; leave all the grumbling and some of the boasting to us!

"And how does America look to me from this side the Atlantic? A magnificent, sunny land of promise— splendid with youth, and hope, and inexhaustible possibilities, which it does one good only to think of, much more to live amongst. If America does not by and by attain to a higher ideal than has any where yet been reached, humanity is a failure and a mistake; for its chances there are splendid, physical, social, intellectual. And as to what America is now to me, when I think of the genial and congenial friends I found there, of the intellectual stir and brightness, of the sense of expansion and encouragement, sunshine without and sunshine within, I feel as if I must come back among you. .