Page:Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters.djvu/367

 swifter ruin ? When is the limit to be put to the destruction of fields?

June 8th, 1876.

My question, a very vital one, is, whether it really never enters your mind at all that all measures of amelioration in great cities, such as your sister's paper pleads for, and as you rejoice in having effected, may in reality be only encouragements to the great Evil Doers in their daily accumulating Sin?

Venice, shortest day, 1876.

I have received to-day your letter, with its beautifully felt and written statement. It comes to me on my birthday to the Nuova Vita ; this day last year being the one on which I got signs sufficient for me that there was hope of that life ; and I am very thankful to" know that I have been thus of use to you, and that you feel that I have ; a much mistaken sense of a separation between us in essential principles having been for two or three years growing upon me, to my great puzzle- ment and pain ; so that this paper is a very moving and precious revelation to me.

June 24th, 1876.

I was greatly delighted by your long kind letter ; and it is much more than a delight to me, and it is a most weighty assistance in my purposes, that you can take this house and put it to use. . ..