Always affectionately yours, M.R.M.

    Swallowfield, August 21, 1854.

My Dear Mr. Fields:  Mr. Bayard Taylor having sent me a most interesting letter, but no address, I trouble you with my reply.  Read it, and you will perhaps understand that I am declining day by day, and that, humanly speaking, the end is very near.  Perhaps there may yet be time for an answer to this....

I believe that one reason for your not quite understanding my illness is, that you, if you have seen long and great sickness at all, which is doubtful, have seen it with an utter prostration of the mind and the spirits,—­that your women are languid and querulous, and never dream of bearing up against bodily evils by an effort of the mind.  Even now, when half an hour’s visit is utterly forbidden, and half that time leaves me panting and exhausted, I never mention (except forced into it by your evident disbelief) my own illness either in speaking or writing,—­never, except to answer Mr. May’s questions, or to join my beloved friend, Mr. Pearson, in thanking God for the visitation which I humbly hope was sent in his mercy to draw me nearer to him; may he grant me grace to use it!—­for the rest, whilst the intelligence and the sympathy are vouchsafed to me, I will write of others, and give to my friends, as far as in me lies, the thoughts which would hardly be more worthily bestowed on my own miserable body.

You will be sorry to find that the poor Talfourds are likely to be very poor.  A Reading attorney has run away, cheating half the town.  He has carried off L4,000 belonging to Lady Talfourd, and she herself tells my friend, William Harness (one of her kindest friends), that that formed the principal part of the Judge’s small savings, and, together with the sum for which he had insured his life (only L5,000), was all which they had.  Now there are five young people,—­his children,—­the widow and an adopted niece, seven in all, accustomed to every sort of luxury and indulgence.  The only glimpse of hope is, that the eldest son held a few briefs on circuit and went through them creditably; but it takes many years in England to win a barrister’s reputation, and the poorer our young men are the more sure they are to marry.  Add the strange fact that since the father’s death (he having reserved his copyrights) not a single copy of any of his books has been sold!  A fortnight ago I had a great fright respecting Miss Martineau, which still continues.  James Payn, who is living at the Lakes, and to whom she has been most kind, says he fears she will be a great pecuniary sufferer by ——.  I only hope that it is a definite sum, and no general security or partnership,—­even that will be bad enough for a woman of her age, and so hard a worker, who intended to give herself rest; but observe these are only fears.  I know nothing.  The Brownings are detained in Italy, she tells me, for want of money, and