she would begin to
abuse the bishops....

Dearest Hal, I took no exercise yesterday but a drive in an open
carriage with Lady Dacre. The Americans call the torture of being
thumped over their roads in their vehicles _exercise_, and so, no doubt,
was Sancho's tossing in the blanket; but voluntary motion being the only
effectual motion for any good purpose of health (or holiness, I take
it), I must be off, and tramp while the daylight lasts.

What a delightful thing good writing is! What a delightful thing good
talking is! How much delight there is in the exercise and perfection of
our faculties! How _full_ a thing, and admirable, and wonderful is this
nature of ours! So Hamlet indeed observes--but he was mad. Good-bye.
Give my love to dear Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours,
FANNY.

THE HOO, WELWYN, December 7th, 1845.
MY DEAREST HAL,

Just before I came down here, Rogers paid me a long visit, and talked a
great deal about Lady Holland; and I felt interested in what he said
about the woman who had been the centre of so remarkable a society and
his intimate friend for so many years. Having all her life appeared to
suffer the most unusual terror, not of death only, but of any accident
that could possibly, or impossibly, befall her, he said that she had
died with perfect composure, and, though consciously within the very
shadow of death for three whole days before she crossed the dark
threshold, she expressed neither fear nor anxiety, and exhibited a
tranquillity of mind by no means general at that time, and which
surprised many of the persons of her acquaintance. If, however, it be
true, as some persons intimate with her have told me, that her terrors
were not genuine, but a mere expression of her morbid love of power,
insisting at all costs and by all means upon occupying everybody about
her with herself, then it is not so strange that she should at last have
ceased to demand the homage and attention of others as she so closely
approached the time when even their most careless recollection would
cease to be at her command.

Rogers said that she spoke of her life with considerable satisfaction,
asserting that she had done as much good and as little harm as she could
during her existence. The only person about whom she expressed any
tenderness was her daughter, Lady ----, with whom,