end,' any more
than this head of mine is my _other_ head, seeing that I have got a
violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told
in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my
Romans--who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have
left the house for a few minutes with my sister--but are not 'with
me,' as you seem to understand it,--in the house to stay. They were
kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what
use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and
praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I
got a ... but I will tell you to-night--or on Friday which is my day,
please--Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,

Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings--what have I
done? God bless you ever dearest friend.

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

Thursday, 7 o'clock.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]

I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write
(or, _speak_, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those
'other friends'--dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve,
and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a
few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &c., fall to my
portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw
her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I
expected by any works published of late?'--to which I answered, of
course, 'exactly as much'--_e grazioso_! (All the same, if you were to
ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum
would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'--she would shudder from
head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you
suppose--(watch my rhetorical figure here)--you suppose I am going to
congratulate myself on being so much for the better, _en pays de
connaissance_, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2--or 200, why
not?--whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens
you, for all the laurels,--and to have reason for your taking my own
part and lot to yourself--I do, will, must, and _will_, again, wonder
at _you_ and admire _you_, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed,
immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But
if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietl