t as if she were dumb--so full of a living sense of beauty, and
of noble blind instincts towards an ideal purity--and so proving a
right even in her wrong. By the way, what you say of the Vidocq museum
reminds me of one of the chamber of masonic trial scenes in
'Consuelo.' Could you like to see those knives?

I began with the best intentions of writing six lines--and see what is
written! And all because I kept my letter back ... from a _doubt about
Saturday_--but it has worn away, and the appointment stands good ...
for me: I have nothing to say against it.

But belief in mesmerism is not the same thing as general unbelief--to
do it justice--now is it? It may be super-belief as well. Not that
there is not something ghastly and repelling to me in the thought of
Dr. Elliotson's great bony fingers seeming to 'touch the stops' of a
whole soul's harmonies--as in phreno-magnetism. And I should have
liked far better than hearing and seeing _that_, to have heard _you_
pour the 'cupful of Diderot's rinsings,' out,--and indeed I can fancy
a little that you and how you could do it--and break the cup too
afterwards!

Another sheet--and for what?

What is written already, if you read, you do so meritoriously--and
it's an example of bad writing, if you want one in the poems. I am
ashamed, you may see, of having written too much, (besides)--which is
_much_ worse--but one writes and writes: _I_ do at least--for _you_
are irreproachable. Ever yours my dear friend, as if I had not written
... or _had_!

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Monday Afternoon.
[Post-mark July 7, 1845.]

While I write this,--3 o'clock you may be going out, I will hope, for
the day is very fine, perhaps all the better for the wind: yet I got
up this morning sure of bad weather. I shall not try to tell you how
anxious I am for the result and to know it. You will of course feel
fatigued at first--but persevering, as you mean to do, do you
not?--persevering, the event must be happy.

I thought, and still think, to write to you about George Sand, and
the vexed question, a very Bermoothes of the 'Mental Claims of the
Sexes Relatively Considered' (so was called the, ... I do believe, ...
worst poem I ever read in my life), and Mrs. Hemans, and all and some
of the points referred to in your letter--but 'by my fay, I cannot
reason,' to-day: