never to see his tenants? Why does he not come and live at his own
beautiful place? Why does he not take up his position in the county? He
is not a magistrate. Why does he not get married?... he is the last;
there is no one to follow him. But he never thinks of that--he is afraid
that a woman might prove a disturbing influence in his life ... he feels
that he must live in an atmosphere of higher emotions. That's the way he
talks, and he is meditating, I assure you, a book on the literature of
the Middle Ages, on the works of bishops and monks who wrote Latin in
the early centuries. His mind, he says, is full of the cadences of that
language. That's the way he writes. He never asks me about his property,
never consults me in anything. Here is a letter I received yesterday.
Listen:


"'The poverty of spiritual life amid the western pagans could not fail to
encourage the growth of new religious tendencies. An epoch of great
spiritual activity had been succeeded by one of complete stagnation. A
glance at the literary progress of Rome since Tiberius will show this
emancipation from national and political considerations, the influence
of cosmopolitanism gave to the best specimens of Latin prose of the
silver age such riches and variety of substance and such individuality
of expression, that Seneca and Tacitus and the letters of Pliny are
marked with many modern characteristics. Form and language appear in
these writers only as the instrument and the matter wherewith men of
genius would express their intimate personality. Here antique culture
rises above itself, but, mark you, at the expense of all that is proper
to the Roman nation. Cosmopolitan Hellenism forces and breaks down the
bars of classical traditions, and, weary of restrictions these writers
first sought personal satisfaction, and then addressed themselves to
scholars rather than the people.