MS British Library

My dear Mr Macmillan,
Many thanks for the cheque for £25 for this month’s Dove. I am not sure whether a letter is still a sufficient receipt, if not please let me know, and I will send a stamped one, but receipt stamps are not easy to come by when one is out of the article, unless we are sending to Winchester, therefore I think it better to acknowledge the cheque at once. And at the same time I send Jacob. I want to give the full scene and circumstances of each stage in foreshadowing and prophecy where it is possible. I am at Moses now and after Balaam I suppose Rahab and Ruth must be touched, and then the promise to David made out fully. Then Isaiah meeting Ahaz at the high way to the Fuller’s field, /Micah\ – Jeremiah’s 31st chapter, Daniel’s fixing the time, the reoccupation of Bethlehem after the captivity. I have no doubt there is much that needs consideration in what I have done. I dwelt much on the doom on the physical world because I wanted to shew what was remedied and what was not, and besides I think the true connection of decay and pain in the animal creation with human sin is rather a relief than otherwise to a young mind, which is other wise grieved by the problem of innocent things suffering. But I have no doubt that there is much that I have not done well, or made out as I meant to do it.

The photograph is very full of expression. I must confess to not having read the Saints’ Tragedy – and but for the candles, the picture made me think it was an eastern scene. The figures all have an eastern look.

I have the magazine now, and I see no slip to care about too much, except that Maximilian was not then king – which no one will know – and that the contraction of Ermentrude’s name should have begun with an T instead of an F. It is a fatality common to all magazines I suppose – for it is always befalling the Monthly Packet – that similar subjects come together – and thus the twin sons exactly alike in the Tale of the New Forest are an odd coincidence with the chief heroes of the Dove

Yours sincerely
C M Yonge