now--happy enough to die now.

May God bless you, dear--dearest--

Ever I am yours--

The book does not come--so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead,
and comes again on _Friday_ he says, and Saturday seems to be clear
still.

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

_Just_ arrived!--(mind, the _silent writing_ overflows the page, and
laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)--But your note
arrived earlier--more of that, when I write after this dreadful
dispatching-business that falls on me--friend A. and B. and C. must
get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!--

Could you think _that_ that untoward letter lived one _moment_ after
it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor
letter,--yet I should have been vexed and offended _then_ to be told I
_could_ love you better than I did already. 'Live and _learn_!' Live
and love you--dearest, as loves you

R.B.

You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other
reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two
instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so,
by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one
of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me
Horne's address--I would send then.)

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]

I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by
my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and
power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling
more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this--or
'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand
which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading
everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in
inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr.
Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what
contradiction!) the _British Quarterly_ has been abusing me so at
large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very
particular friend indeed,--of someone who positively never reviewed
before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I
suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are f