The Bishop of Exeter is staying and preaching at Torquay.  Do you not envy them all for making part of his congregation?  I am sure I do as much.  I envy you your before-breakfast activity.  I am never a complete man without my breakfast—­it seems to be some integral part of my soul. You ‘read all O’Connell’s speeches.’  I never read any of them—­unless they take me by surprise.  I keep my devotion for unpaid patriots; but Miss Mitford is another devotee of Mr. O’Connell ...

Dearest Mrs. Martin’s affectionate
E.B.  BARRETT.

Thank you for the ‘Ba’ in Henrietta’s letter.  If you knew how many people, whom I have known only within this year or two, whether I like them or not, say ‘Ba, Ba,’ quite naturally and pastorally, you would not come to me with the detestable ‘Miss B.’

[Footnote 32:  Serjeant Talfourd.]

[Footnote 33:  Poetical Works, ii. 248.]

To Mrs. Martin London:  August 16, 1837.

My dear Mrs. Martin,—­It seems a long long time since we had any intercourse; and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta must go to you from me.  We have heard of you that you don’t mean to return to England before the spring—­which news proved me a prophet, and disappointed me at the same time, for one can’t enjoy even a prophecy in this world without something vexing.  Indeed, I do long to see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances were as much multiplied as you wrongly suppose them to be.  But the truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense.  Dear Miss Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in geraniums, thirty miles away.  I could not conceive what Henrietta had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time—­until we conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to receive me at her conversations—­and you know me better than to doubt whether I would go or not.  There was an equal unworthiness and unwillingness towards the honor of it.  Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin, it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in Devonshire—­perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we see and hear in this place.  No house yet!  And you will scarcely have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that he may take it, and we may be settled in it, before the year closes.  I myself think of the whole business indifferently.  My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken—­and now they won’t turn any more.  All that