as I used to
be "long time ago," it would be quite an agreeable novelty now.

Ever yours affectionately,
FANNY.

Friday, November 21st, 1845.

This letter was begun yesterday evening, my beloved Hal. My nerves are
rather in a quieter state than when I wrote last, thanks to a warm bath
and cold head-douche, which, taken together, I recommend to you as
beneficial for the brain and general nervous system....

I am going to dine _tete-a-tete_ with Rogers; I have persuaded him to
come down with me to Burnham. Poor old man! he is very much broken and
altered, very deaf, very sad. This last year has taken from him Sydney
and Bobus Smith; and now, the day before yesterday, his old friend Lady
Holland died, and he literally stands as though his "turn" were next--it
may be mine.

Do you know, that in reading that striking account or Arnold's death, I
got such a pain in my heart that I felt as if I was going to die so.
_So!_ So, indeed, God grant I might die! but none can die so who has not
so lived.

Two things surprise me in Arnold's opinions--three,--his detailed
account of wars between nations without any expression of condemnation
of war, but rather a soldierly satisfaction in strife and strategy.
This, by-the-by, my friend Charles Sumner notices with regret in his
"Peace Oration." Then Arnold's apparent approbation of men, even
clergymen, going to law for their rights, while at the same time
speaking with detestation of the legal profession, which surely involves
some inconsistency. Clergymen, according to the vulgar theory, are
imagined to be, if not less resentful in spirit, at any rate more
pacific in action than the laity, and ought, to my thinking, no more to
go to law than to war. The third thing that puzzles me is his constant
reference to what he calls a Church, or "_the_ Church," which, with his
views about Christianity, is a term that I do not comprehend.

It is curious to me to see Emily's marks along the margin. They are the
straight ones, and are applied zealously everywhere to passages of
dogmatical discussion about doctrines. Mine you will find the crooked
ones, and my pencil, of course, invariably flew to the side of what
expressed moral excellence and a perception of material beauty. Those
passages that Emily has marked I do not understand--does she? I ask this
i