o thinks it
most admirable, was obliged to confess that the main question of
progress, involving dissimilar products from similar causes, was
_non-proven_. And I think there are discrepancies, moreover, in minor
points: but that may only be because of my profound ignorance.

The book is extremely disagreeable to me, though my ignorance and desire
for knowledge combined give it, when treating of facts, a thousand times
more interest than the best of novels for me; but its conclusions are
utterly revolting to me,--nevertheless, they may be true.

I cannot write any more. B---- has just given me the _Athenaeum_, with a
long notice of Mendelssohn; and I am thinking more of him just now than
anything else in the world....

God bless you, my dear.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

LEEDS, Friday, November 19th.

Mendelssohn's death did indeed give me a bitter and terrible shock. He
was one of the bright sources of truth, at which I had hoped I might
drink at some time or other. I always looked forward to some probable
season of intercourse with him, the likelihood of which was increased by
E---- and Adelaide's love for and intimacy with him. Intercourse with
him seemed to me a privilege almost certainly to be mine, in the course
of the next few years. This is only my own small selfish share of the
great general grief. I feel particularly for E----. He seems to find so
very few people that satisfy him, whom he is fond of, or who are at all
congenial to him, that the loss of a dear friend, and such a man, will
indeed fall heavily upon him.

Those whose sympathies are more general, and whose taste can accept and
find pleasure in the intercourse of the majority of their
fellow-creatures, are fortunate in this respect, that no one loss can
make the world empty for them; and thus the qualities of kindliness and
benevolence are repaid, like all other virtues, even in this world
(which is nevertheless not heaven), into the bosom of those who practise
them.

For a person who has permitted intellectual refinement to become almost
a narrow fastidiousness, and whose sympathies are of that exclusive kind
that none but special and rarely gifted persons can excite them, the
loss of such a friend as Mendelssohn must be incalculable; and I am
grieved to the heart for E----.

I do not know what is to be d