yond the ruin she has brought on her own life.

Think of Miss Mitford's growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has
spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me
this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be 'a
presumptuous coxcomb.' He has displeased her in some way--that is
clear. What changes there are in the world.

Should I ever change to _you_, do you think, ... even if you came to
'love me less'--not that I meant to reproach you with that
possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle
(beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they
seem more blue. Is not _that_ strange?

Ever and wholly

Your BA.

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]

And I offended you by praising your letters--or rather _mine_, if you
please--as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not
fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think--by
calling them 'graphic,' 'philosophic,'--why, did I ever use such
words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters,
it would be an end!--but no, no ... I did not, for a moment. In what I
said I went back to my first impressions--and they were _vital_
letters, I said--which was the resume of my thoughts upon the early
ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be _you_ from the
very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several
times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as
you did. Well!--and had I not a right to say _that_ now at last, and
was it not natural to say just _that_, when I was talking of other
people's letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read
them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.

And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine
day, that _that_ is said in more music than it could be said in by
another--where is the sin against _you_, I should like to ask. It is
yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the
brine, I hold my letters--just as Camoens did his poem. They are _best
to me_--and they are _best_. I knew what _they_ were, before I knew
what _you_ were--all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied
anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.

What