n a very few words. Well, it is no matter.

I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected
book--title, scheme, all of it,--_that_ is astounding;--and fairies?
If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies--_this_ maketh that
there ben no fairies'--locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must
keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world
passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if _we_ have the making
of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to
hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play
goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir
[Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is
slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually
insisted upon and drawn boldly ... _here_, you have it gone over with
an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes
whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of
mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode,
'Sic fatur--so said AEneas; lachrymans--_a-crying_' ... our pedagogue
turned on him furiously--'D'ye think AEneas made such a noise--as _you_
shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy,
smiling at itself.

Then _Tuesday_, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer
afterward. I am singularly well to-day--head quite quiet--and
yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my
last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor
dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever--

R.

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

Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]

Something, you said yesterday, made me happy--'that your liking for me
did not come and go'--do you remember? Because there was a letter,
written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully,
as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your
fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold
water'!--and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my
thoughts of you too much, until quite of late--while even yesterday I
was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach
me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'--it was your own word!
And the other long word _idi