e it up to you.[76]

I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite failed in
trying to read him at my "usual pace--he _won't_ be read quick. After
all, and full of beauty and truth as that book is, and strongly as it
takes hold of my sympathies, there is nothing new in it--not even a
new Carlyleism, which I do not say by way of blaming the book, because
the author of it might use words like the apostle's: 'To write the
same things unto you, to me indeed is not grievous, and to you it is
safe.' The world being blind and deaf and rather stupid, requires a
reiteration of certain uncongenial truths....

Thank you for the address.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

I observe that the _most questionable rhymes_ are not objected to by
Mr. Merivale; also--but this letter is too long already.

[Footnote 76: Mr. Kenyon's view evidently prevailed, for stanza 19 now
has 'scornful children.']

_To Mrs. Martin_
May 3, 1843.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--If _you_ promised (which you did), _I_ ought
to have promised--and therefore we may ask each other's pardon....

How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find himself in Arcadia?
Do we all stand in his recollection like a species of fog, or a
concentrated essence of brick wall? How I wish--and since I said it
aloud to you I have often wished it over in a whisper--that you would
put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six months of the
year in London with us! Miss Mitford believes that wishes, if wished
hard enough, realise themselves, but my experience has taught me a
less cheerful creed. Only if wishes _do_ realise themselves!

Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week and is about to
spend two, and then goes on her way into Devonshire. She amused me so
the other day by desiring me to look at the date of Mr. Landor's poems
in their first edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty
years since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario
of Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands, and
'enjoying,' altogether, the worst of reputations. I suggested that
if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself
enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical
ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to
investigate gentlemen's ages was invidious, and might be alarming as
to the safe inscrutability of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the
_scenery of Bath_, which certa