845.]

And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause,
pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took
exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to
this much--that you should help seeing, if you could, our true
intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you
would allow _me_ to see what _is_ there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil
because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you
vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the
wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,--I think that at least where
there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a
way,--that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers
with, and write you other letters than these--quite, quite others, I
feel--though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what
might be the precise prodigy--like the notable Son of Zeus, that _was_
to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &c. &c.

But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well,
you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being
positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are
neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special
naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to
signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you
will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the
'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.

I am truly happy to hear that your health improves still.

For me, going out does me good--reading, writing, and, what is
odd,--infinitely most of all, _sleeping_ do me the harm,--never any
very great harm. And all the while I am yours

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday.
[Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]

I had begun to be afraid that I did not deserve to have my questions
answered; and I was afraid of asking them over again. But it is worse
to be afraid that you are not better at all in any essential manner
(after all your assurances) and that the medical means have failed so
far. Did you go to somebody who knows anything?--because there is no
excuse, you see, in common sense, for not having the best and most
experienced opinion when there is a choice of advice--and I am