sh.

More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into
the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I
see that you love me and that I am bound to you:--and 'what more need
I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to
the blue ridges of the hills, to the _chances_ of your being happy
with me. Well! I am yours as _you_ see ... and not yours to teaze you.
You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ...
and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the
liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the
house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window--least of
all, _I_.

For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say,
and further from the world, as I think--out of hearing of the great
storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to
live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no
sacrifice for me--and whether in Italy or England, we should have
sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying
by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably
praise--which, if it had been necessary to modify, _we must have
parted_, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though,
that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.

Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had
been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his
club (the Athenaeum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of
something better to say--and he had not heard of it. There were more
black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of
his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy
councillor.

But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson--I forgot to tell you--I
forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and
confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does
not prevent his writing a new poem--he has finished the second book of
it--and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the
'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has
not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I
don't know what to think--it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the
world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so
many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope th