or two for the privilege of not possessing—­so execrable as sign-paintings even!  ’Are there worse poets in their way than painters?’ Yet the melancholy business is here—­that the bad poet goes out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do afterwards—­but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other good do his acquisitions go?  This short minute of life our one chance, an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up and conies out after a dozen years with ‘Titian’s Daughter’ and, there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!

I have tried—­my trial is made too!

To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to see you so well—­did she not wonder?  Ah, to-morrow!  There is a lesson from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip, dearest?  See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the chrystals, you say!  But the writing is but for a time—­’a time and times and half a time!’—­would I knew when the prophetic weeks end!  Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush’s ears!) meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise diplomacy and say carelessly ’I should be glad to know what Miss B. is like—­’ No, that I must not do, something tells me, ’for reasons, for reasons’—­

I do not know—­you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my ‘divine Murillo’ of a Tragedy.  My sister is copying it as I give the pages, but—­in fact my wise head does ache a little—­it is inconceivable!  As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone, and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird’s foot, which would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling!  The aching begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite naturally, and with no shame at all!  But it is gentle, well-behaved aching now, so I do care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another, even your sister, if—­if—­

But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes, till to-morrow—­Bless you, my own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]

You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek a ‘security’! do you know it was not right of you to use such an expression—­indeed no.  You were angry with me for just one minute, or you would not have used it—­and why?  Now what did I say that was wrong or unkind even by construction?