e there was much to answer in yours. It interested me. I
could not help wishing to tell you how nearly I agreed with
you.--Believe me, yours sincerely,

'C. BELL.'

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

'_April_ 5_th_, 1849.

'MY DEAR SIR,--Your note was very welcome. I purposely impose on
myself the restraint of writing to you seldom now, because I know but
too well my letters cannot be cheering. Yet I confess I am glad when
the post brings me a letter: it reminds me that if the sun of action
and life does not shine on us, it yet beams full on other parts of
the world--and I like the recollection.

'I am not going to complain. Anne has indeed suffered much at
intervals since I last wrote to you--frost and east wind have had
their effect. She has passed nights of sleeplessness and pain, and
days of depression and languor which nothing could cheer--but still,
with the return of genial weather she revives. I cannot perceive
that she is feebler now than she was a month ago, though that is not
saying much. It proves, however, that no rapid process of
destruction is going on in her frame, and keeps alive a hope that
with the renovating aid of summer she may yet be spared a long time.

'What you tell me of Mr. Lewes seems to me highly characteristic.
How sanguine, versatile, and self-confident must that man be who can
with ease exchange the quiet sphere of the author for the bustling
one of the actor! I heartily wish him success; and, in happier
times, there are few things I should have relished more than an
opportunity of seeing him in his new character.

'The Cornhill books are still our welcome and congenial resource when
Anne is well enough to enjoy reading. Carlyle's _Miscellanies_
interest me greatly. We have read _The Emigrant Family_. The
characters in the work are good, full of quiet truth and nature, and
the local colouring is excellent; yet I can hardly call it a good
novel. Reflective, truth-loving, and even elevated as is Alexander
Harris's mind, I should say he scarcely possesses the creative
faculty in sufficient vigour to excel as a writer of fiction. He
_creates_ nothing--he only copies. His characters are
portraits--servilely accura