rost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what
happiness you mean to give me,--what a life; what a death! 'I may
change'--too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning
so it continues--I _may_ take up stones and pelt the next I
see--but--do you much fear that?--Now, _walk_, move, _guizza, anima
mia dolce_. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from
mine as we walk? May I let that stay ... dearest, (the _line_ stay,
not the mouth)?

I am not very well to-day--or, rather, have not been so--_now_, I am
well and _with you_. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict
frankness' sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all
about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless
you, and leave you in the hands of God--My own love!--

Tell me if I do wrong to send _this_ by a morning post--so as to reach
you earlier than the evening--when you will ... write to me?

Don't let me forget to say that I shall receive the _Review_
to-morrow, and will send it directly.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, January 6, 1846.]

When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading
just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a
little of it--and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do,
I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the
first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty.
But last night I read the 'Monk of Swineshead Abbey' and the 'Three
Knights of Camelott' and 'Bedd Gelert' and found them all of different
stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure
and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless
ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines
for clearness--

Like to the cloud upon the hill
We are a moment seen
Or the _shadow of the windmill-sail
Across yon sunny slope of green_.

New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and
beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just
touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying
is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with
more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show--for his
character is a vague grand massiveness,--like Stonehenge--or at least,
if 'towers and battlements he sees' they