self enchained by his pleasant,
graceful, easy style, varied knowledge, just views, and kindly
spirit. There is something peculiarly anti-melancholic in Leigh
Hunt's writings, and yet they are never boisterous. They resemble
sunshine, being at once bright and tranquil.

'I like Carlyle better and better. His style I do not like, nor do I
always concur in his opinions, nor quite fall in with his hero
worship; but there is a manly love of truth, an honest recognition
and fearless vindication of intrinsic greatness, of intellectual and
moral worth, considered apart from birth, rank, or wealth, which
commands my sincere admiration. Carlyle would never do for a
contributor to the _Quarterly_. I have not read his _French
Revolution_.

'I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin's
new work. If the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ resemble their
predecessor, _Modern Painters_, they will be no lamps at all, but a
new constellation--seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading
world ought to be anxiously agaze.

'Do not ask me to mention what books I should like to read. Half the
pleasure of receiving a parcel from Cornhill consists in having its
contents chosen for us. We like to discover, too, by the leaves cut
here and there, that the ground has been travelled before us. I may
however say, with reference to works of fiction, that I should much
like to see one of Godwin's works, never having hitherto had that
pleasure--_Caleb Williams_ or _Fleetwood_, or which you thought best
worth reading.

'But it is yet much too soon to talk of sending more books; our
present stock is scarcely half exhausted. You will perhaps think I
am a slow reader, but remember, Currer Bell is a country housewife,
and has sundry little matters connected with the needle and kitchen
to attend to which take up half his day, especially now when, alas!
there is but one pair of hands where once there were three. I did
not mean to touch that chord, its sound is too sad.

'I try to write now and then. The effort was a hard one at first.
It renewed the terrible loss of last December strangely. Worse than
useless did it seem to attempt to write what there no longer lived an
"Ellis Bell" to read; the whole book, with every hope founded on it,
faded to vanity and vexation of spirit