ed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not
twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,--and almost every
time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the
reflection that _that_ is the way for making all sorts of mistakes
dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!--the
highway.

For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the
truth--as partial truth:--I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I
am not apt to be extravagant in my _esprit de sexe_: the Martineau
doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember,
like a woman--most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But
we are not on that ground now--we are on ground worth holding a brief
for!--and when women fail _here_ ... it is not so much our fault.
Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.

It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third
act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,--indeed of the exquisite
double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be
better, I think, than this:--

To the motive, the endeavour,--the heart's self--
Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,
Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;

except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes
afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to
you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of
the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could
be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal
only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!
You shall tell Mr. Forster so.

And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how
fine he is when the doubt breaks on him--I mean, when he begins ...
'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that
process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which
at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that
he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is
managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....

... 'so slight, so slight,
And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'--

And then, the direct approach....

You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
What is it in your eyes?--

Do you not fe