ween ourselves) that ----'s brain is suffering,--the terrible
malady by which so many of our great mental laborers (Scott and
Southey, above all) have fallen. Dr. Buckland is now dying of it. I
am afraid ---- may be so lost to the world and his friends, not
merely because his health is going, but because certain
peculiarities have come to my knowledge which look like it. A
brother clergyman saw him the other day, upon a common near his own
house, spouting, singing, and reciting verse at the top of his voice
at one o'clock in the morning. Upon inquiring what was the matter,
the poet said that he never went to bed till two or three o'clock,
and frequently went out in that way to exercise his lungs. My
informant, an orderly person of a very different stamp, set him down
for mad at once; but he is much beloved among his parishioners, and
if the escapade above mentioned do not indicate disease of the
brain, I can only say it would be good for the country if we had
more madmen of the same sort. As to John Ruskin, I would not answer
for quiet people not taking him for crazy too. He is an enthusiast
in art, often right, often wrong,--"in the right very stark, in the
wrong very sturdy,"--bigoted, perverse, provoking, as ever man was;
but good and kind and charming beyond the common lot of mortals.
There are some pages of his prose that seem to me more eloquent than
anything out of Jeremy Taylor, and I should think a selection of his
works would answer to reprint. Their sale here is something
wonderful, considering their dearness, in this age of cheap
literature, and the want of attraction in the subject, although the
illustrations of the "Stones of Venice," executed by himself from
his own drawings, are almost as exquisite as the writings. By the
way, he does not say what I heard the other day from another friend,
just returned from the city of the sea, that Taglioni has purchased
four of the finest palaces, and is restoring them with great taste,
by way of investment, intending to let them to Russian and English
noblemen. She was a very graceful dancer once, was Taglioni; but
still it rather depoetizes the place, which of all others was
richest in associations.

Mrs. Browning has got as near to England as Paris, and holds out
enough of hope of coming to London to keep me from visiting it unt