you--all
precious that you are--as may be given in a lock of your hair--I will
live and die with it, and with the memory of you--this _at_ the
_worst_! If you give me what I beg,--shall I say next Tuesday ... when
I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think
you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and
remember me one day--when the power to deserve more may be greater ...
never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So
I can but pray, kissing your hand.

R.B.

Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel,
for the love's sake that it grew from.

The _Chronicle_ was through Moxon, I believe--Landor had sent the
verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I
never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself,
and never more for its influence on _other people_ than now--I would
stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you--yet not, after
all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure,
unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my
own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I
corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother,
differently trained, looking different ways--and for some of the
peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good
reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'--NO!
But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further
acquaintance ... and,--woe's me--will find that 'assumption's' pertest
self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr.
K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped
onward far too readily.

Good night, now. Am I not yours--are you not mine? And can that make
_you_ happy too?

Bless you once more and for ever.

That scrap of Landor's being for no other eye than mine--I made the
foolish comment, that there was no blotting out--made it some four or
five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my
idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go--but there used
to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew
characters--the noble languages!

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

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

But what unlawful things