After breakfast they leave me for the morning, which they now pass with
their governess or nurse. For the last two months I have ridden every
day, but have unhappily disabled my horse for the present, poor fellow!
by galloping him during a sudden heavy rain-shower over a slippery road,
in which process he injured one of his hip-joints, not incurably, I
trust, but so as to deprive me of him for at least three months. [My
dear and noble horse never recovered from this injury, but was obliged
to be shot. He had been sold, and I had ransomed him back by the
publication of a small volume of poems, which gave me the price demanded
for him by the livery-stable keeper who had bought him; but the
accident I mention in this letter deprived me of him. He was beautiful
and powerful, high-spirited and good-tempered, almost a perfect
creature, and I loved him very much.]

I shall now walk after breakfast, as, my rides being suppressed, my
walks with the chicks are not exercise enough for me. After that, I
prepare for my German lesson (which I take three times a week) and write
letters. I take the children out again at half-past six, and at
half-past seven come in to my dinner; after dinner I go to my piano, and
generally sit at it or read until I go to bed, which I do early,--_et
voila!_

Almost all the people I know are out of town now, and I do not see a
human creature; the heat is intense and the air foul and stifling, and
we are gasping for breath and withering away in this city atmosphere....

God bless you, dear Hal.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

[In the autumn of 1845 I returned to England, and resided with my
father in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, until I went to Italy
and joined my sister at Rome; a plan for my returning with my father
to America having been entertained and abandoned in the mean time.]

MORTIMER STREET, October 3d, 1845.

Heaven be praised, my American letters are finished!--eleven long ones,
eleven shillings' worth. I am sure somebody (but at this moment I don't
rightly know who) ought to pay me eleven shillings for such a batch of
work. So now I have nothing to do but answer your daily calls, my
dearest Hal, which "nothing," as I write it, looks like a bad joke. If
you expect me, however, to write you a long letter on the heels of that
heavy American budget, you deceive yourself, my de