I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and books.  I am so anxious to see my old books.  I believe I shall begin at the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting, and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair.  I remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and flowers (I do that still—­I still believe they have a certain animal susceptibility to pleasure and pain; ‘it is my creed,’ and, being Wordsworth’s besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love in them to suit my love to them.  And so if I were a child I should have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them.  Pray forgive me if I have written a great deal of nonsense—­’Je m’en doute.’

Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant air which I always fancy people ‘just from the country’ put on towards us hapless Londoners.

But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day long at being in London. There are many advantages here, as I say to myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can’t see even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and sunshine of paradise.  I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books, has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one.  She visits London at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away....

Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry, before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did.  Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which cloud and weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be believed possible without looking into it....

As to society in London, I assure you that none of us have much, and that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude.  My doves are my chief acquaintances, and I am so very intimate with them that they accept and even demand my assistance in building their innumerable nests.  Do tell me if there is any hope of seeing any of you in London at any time.  I say ‘do tell me,’ for I will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me a little about you, and whether Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well.  Pray believe me under all circumstances,