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and there by something of especial interest. Although there is, I need not say, much that I am too ignorant to understand, yet I have such a strong interest and curiosity respecting those high and abstruse scientific topics he treats of, that I persevere and do not miss a line for the sake of the glimpses and hints I am now and then able to seize. Especially do I wrestle with the fragments on what he calls the metaphysics of physics, singularly attracted always by them.

"I rejoice to find there is quite a considerable number of Herschel's letters too. Have you seen a really magnificent portrait of him from a photograph, by Mrs. Cameron, in the June Century? Also an interesting one of Sir William Herschel, the wonderful intensity of whose face reminds one curiously of Blake's.

"I trust you are feeling rested and refreshed by the trip to London. It is a delightful thing to be engaged in such a task,—in the study of and close companionship as it were of such a mind as Sir William Hamilton, and I cannot but think that some regrets will mingle with rejoicing when the work is completed. I see you have in this volume handled the delicate subject of Hamilton's one failing, and if I may be permitted to say so, have done it with that tenderness and consideration of the circumstances which is as essential to justice as to kindness."

On the premature death of the beloved and gifted nephew, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, she writes to William Rossetti, March 15 1885:-"I believe I may say that Sidney Thomas's death is a loss that extends far beyond the circle of his relations and friends.

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