some commonplace
thanks after the customary mode (just as Capt. Domett sent a heap of
unnecessary thanks to me not long ago for sending now a letter now a
book to his son in New Zealand--keeping up the spirits of poor dear
Alfred now he is cut off from the world at large)--and if _this_ had
been done, I shall not deny that my heart would have accused
me--unreasonably I _know_ but still, suppression, and reserve, and
apprehension--the whole of _that is_ horrible always! But this way of
looking on the endeavour of anybody, however humble, to just preserve
your life, remedy in some degree the first, if it _was_ the first,
unjustifiable measure,--this being 'displeased'--is exactly what I did
_not_ calculate upon. Observe, that in this _only_ instance I am able
to do as I shall be done by; to take up the arms furnished by the
world, the usages of society--this is monstrous on the _world's_
showing! I say this now that I may never need recur to it--that you
may understand why I keep _such_ entire silence henceforth.

Get but well, keep but _as_ well, and all is easy now. This wonderful
winter--the spring--the summer--you will take exercise, go up and down
stairs, get strong. _I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest!_
Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after _rouge_ one
expects _noir_: the _likelihood_ of a _severe_ winter after this mild
one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your
life in Italy, ought you not to do that? And the matters brought to
issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal
than before, if you are _well_, plainly well enough to bear the
voyage) _there_ I _will_ bid you 'be mine in the obvious way'--if you
shall preserve your belief in me--and you _may_ in much, in all
important to you. Mr. Kenyon's praise is undeserved enough, but
yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, _tenax
propositi_, able to make out a life for himself and abide in
it--'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this
_titillation_ and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all
kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is _more_ true--and I
_intend_ by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole
energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in
the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do
will be found included, facilitated--I shall be able--but of this
there is