.Njg2.MTQ2OQ

almost nine hundred then, while to-day the Morning Report shows only about 250 for duty. Such havoc has war, sickness, and the weary leagues of marching, made in the ranks of our comrades. In your letter you asked me a question which you meant for an illustration, and which unintentionally took the form of an interrogatory. You had been saying that the poets expressed for us our own feelings, aspirations, forebodings, but which we could not express for ourselves: then you enquired whether I had never been struck with a face which seemed the realization of the "fair friend whom not having seen, I loved." That is a question difficult to answer. All my life long I have loved beauty with a wonderful passion, and I think I can understand how poor Shelly felt when he exclaimed addressing the Spirit of Nature, "O awful loveliness!" I know, indeed, that this inborn reverence for purity and symmetry of form and color, has had something to do with keeping my life clean amid the sensualism and savageism of a soldier's existence. Everything beautiful is to me a revelation from God; but I do not think I have ever looked into the face of a woman, and found there the perfect embodiment of my ideal vision. I do not regret this. I think it is all right. There is, to me, and unutterable sanctity about the satisfiedness of young mated souls, all a-tremble with excess of Peace. It is very holy. But I know it will not last; and that, as new powers are born, new tendernesses developed, new wants recognized, their ideals will grow also, and bye and bye they will smile as they look back and see with what weak nectar they were once