the book away, it is so tedious every now and then; and besides I want more beauty, more air from the universal world—­these classbooks must always be defective as works of art.  How could I help being disappointed a little when Mrs. Jameson told me that ’since the “Bride of Lammermoor,” nothing had appeared equal to “Mary Barton"?’ Then the style of the book is slovenly, and given to a kind of phraseology which would be vulgar even as colloquial English.  Oh, it is a powerful book in many ways.  You are not to set me down as hypercritical.  Probably the author will, write herself clear of many of her faults:  she has strength enough.  As to ‘In Memoriam,’ I have seen it, I have read it—­dear Mr. Kenyon had the goodness to send it to me by an American traveller—­and now I really do disagree with you, for the book has gone to my heart and soul; I think it full of deep pathos and beauty.  All I wish away is the marriage hymn at the end, and that for every reason I wish away—­it’s a discord in the music.  The monotony is a part of the position—­(the sea is monotonous, and so is lasting grief.) Your complaint is against fate and humanity rather than against the poet Tennyson.  Who that has suffered has not felt wave after wave break dully against one rock, till brain and heart, with all their radiances, seemed lost in a single shadow?  So the effect of the book is artistic, I think, and indeed I do not wonder at the opinion which has reached us from various quarters that Tennyson stands higher through having written it.  You see, what he appeared to want, according to the view of many, was an earnest personality and direct purpose.  In this last book, though of course there is not room in it for that exercise of creative faculty which elsewhere established his fame, he appeals heart to heart, directly as from his own to the universal heart, and we all feel him nearer to us—­I do—­and so do others.  Have you read a poem called ‘the Roman’ which was praised highly in the ‘Athenaeum,’ but did not seem to Robert to justify the praise in the passages extracted? written by somebody with certainly a nom de guerre—­Sidney Yendys.  Observe, Yendys is Sidney reversed.  Have you heard anything about it, or seen?  The ‘Athenaeum’ has been gracious to me beyond gratitude almost; nothing could by possibility be kinder.  A friend of mine sent me the article from Brussels—­a Mr. Westwood, who writes poems himself; yes, and poetical poems too, written with an odorous, fresh sense of poetry about them.  He has not original power, more’s the pity:  but he has stayed near the rose in the ‘sweet breath and buddings of the spring,’ and although that won’t make anyone live beyond spring-weather, it is the expression of a sensitive and aspirant nature; and the man is interesting and amiable—­an old correspondent of mine, and kind to me always.  From the little I know of Mr. Bennett, I should say that Mr. Westwood stood much higher in the matter