To Robert Seymour Bridges
Dover, England. October 31, 1923
My glimpse of England after four years has left me with mixed feelings. I fear my English days are over. Nothing I could now see or feel would be likely to equal the memories I have of other days, which, if not the beaux jours of England, were at least my beaux jours, and which it is almost a pity to overlay with sadder impressions. Oxford is very much itself in spite of obvious crowding, and the flocks of women on bicycles which come round the corners of New College Lane Sunt lacrymae rerum but so mixed with pleasure that all regrets become impertinent.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England