Do write to me soon.  I hear that everybody should read Dr. Arnold’s ‘Life.’  Do you know also ‘E[=o]then,’ a work of genius?  You have read, perhaps, Hewitt’s ‘Visits to Remarkable Places’ in the first series and second; and Mrs. Jameson’s ‘Visits and Sketches’ and ’Life in Mexico.’  Do you know the ‘Santa Fe Expedition,’ and Custine’s ‘Russia,’ and ‘Forest Life’ by Mrs. Clavers?  You will think that my associative process is in a most disorderly state, by all this running up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects, in the naming of books.  I would write a list, more as a list should be written, if I could see my way better, and this will do for a beginning in any case.  You do not like romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every romance now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one’s heart and soul out, as a process of course.  ‘Ellen Middleton’ (which I have not read yet) is said to be very painful.  Do you know Leigh Hunt’s exquisite essays called ‘The Indicator and Companion’ &c., published by Moxon?  I hold them at once in delight and reverence.  May God bless you both.

I am ever your affectionate
BA.

To Mrs. Martin 50 Wimpole Street:  Tuesday, November 26, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I thank you much for your little notes; and you know too well how my sympathy answers you, ’as face to face in a glass,’ for me to assure you of it here.  Your account of yourselves altogether I take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody to gain strength very rapidly while in the actual endurance of hard medical discipline.  I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that you may both trust and hope in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard the very highest praises the other day....

Now really I don’t know why I should fancy you to be so deeply interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary.  What I do want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau’s mesmeric experience,[118] for a copy of which, in the last ‘Athenaeum,’ I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of sending it to you.  You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer.  Believing in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary connection between Miss Martineau’s cure and the power; and also I am of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts through her representations.  There is a tone of exaltation which will be observed upon, and one or two sentences are suggestive to scepticism.  I will send it to you when I get the number.  I understand that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled down from the south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public exposition, but could not prevail.  Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her visitor.  He is fully a believer, she says, and affirms to having seen the same phenomena in the