h the blind Hopes; you are not
to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either
to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God
forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature,
and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily
seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and
oftener feel),--the wisdom of cheerfulness--and the duty of social
intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And
altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in
proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees
are plucked up by the roots--but the sunshine is in their places, and
the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a
condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and
wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these
faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.

And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to _happiness_, and I
feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.
Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time,
the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called,
sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle--or your step would not be
'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr.
Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe
your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I
thank you for some of it already.

Also, writing as from friend to friend--as you say rightly that we
are--I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been
called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the
world, and the treason of it--the unworthiness of the dearest; of
these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal
experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions,
and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the
moralists. People have been kind to _me_, even without understanding
me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:--nay, have not the
very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as
sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world,
though I am not of it, as you see. And I h