h
_correctable_ in them,--you make, or you spoil, one of these things;
that is, _I_ do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in
lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write
plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop
interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I
am to receive a _proof_ at the end of the week--will you help me and
over-look it. ('Yes'--she says ... my thanks I do not say!--)

While writing this, the _Times_ catches my eye (it just came in) and
something from the _Lancet_ is extracted, a long article against
quackery--and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I
read--'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of
some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted.
We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into
the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets,
touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a
poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style
worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and
Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her
physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand
God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer
Hall.'--Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus
is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!

What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me--could you
not go out on such days?

I am quite well now--cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle
arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would--so my travel
would have been to great purpose!

Bless my dearest--my own!

R.B.

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

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]

Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday,
I did not receive until nearly midnight--partly through the
eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use
of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in
the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being
ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel--for there is no new case
of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day.
And just so late last night, fiv