those
certainties, such reading and such regret had nothing whatever to do
with the silence which made you so angry with me.

The other particular thing of which I should have written is Mr.
Parker and my letters. I am more and, more sorry that you should have
sent them to him at all--not that their loss is any loss to anybody,
but that I scarcely like the idea--indeed, I don't like it at all--of
their remaining, worthless as they are, at Mr. P.'s mercy. As for
my writing about them, I should not be able to make up my mind to
do _that_. You know I had nothing to do with their being sent to Mr.
Parker, and was indeed in complete ignorance of it. Besides, I should
be half ashamed to write to him now on any subject. A very long
interregnum took place in our correspondence, which was his own work;
and when he wrote to me the summer before last, I delayed from week
to week, and then from month to month, answering it. And now I feel
ashamed to write at all.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to write to _you_. Indeed
I have meant to do it very, very often. Don't be severe upon me. I am
always afraid of writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault
is apt to be run into--of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a _fault_.
You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster developed.

Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading
the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon
Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows
but what I may die a glorious death under the _pons asinorum_ after
all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that
matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of
matter--the ultimate molecules--are a kind of _tertium quid_ between
matter and spirit. Certainly I can't believe that any kind of matter,
primal or ultimate, can be _indivisible_, which it must according to
his view.

Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to
matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to
do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade--'no tree on which a
fine bird did not sit.' ...

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

_To H.S. Boyd_
Sidmouth: September 14, [1834].

My dear Mr. Boyd,--I won't ask you to forgive me for not writing
before, because I know very well that you would rather have not heard
from me immediately.... And so, you and Mrs. Mathew