May God bless you.  He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as your Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]

First and most important of all,—­dearest, ’angry’—­with you, and for that!  It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I so love and so am grateful to—­having been used to go there when a child, far under the age allowed by the regulations—­those two Guidos, the wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob’s vision, such a Watteau, the triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music-lesson group, all the Poussins with the ‘Armida’ and ’Jupiter’s nursing’—­and—­no end to ’ands’—­I have sate before one, some one of those pictures I had predetermined to see, a good hour and then gone away ... it used to be a green half-hour’s walk over the fields.  So much for one error, now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with seeing, (not, not ’looking for’)—­seeing undue ‘security’ in that, in the form,—­I meant to say ’you talk about me being ‘free’ now, free till then, and I am rather jealous of the potency attributed to the form, with all its solemnity, because it is a form, and no more—­yet you frankly agree with me that that form complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am then sure enough, to repent at leisure &c. &c.’  So I meant to ask, ’then, all now said, all short of that particular form of saying it, all goes for comparatively nothing’?  Here it is written down—­you ’wish to suspend all decisions as long as possible’—­that form effects the decision, then,—­till then, ‘where am I’?  Which is just what Lord Chesterfield cautions people against asking when they tell stories.  Love, Ba, my own heart’s dearest, if all is not decided now—­why—­hear a story, a propos of storytelling, and deduce what is deducible.  A very old Unitarian minister met a still older evangelical brother—­John Clayton (from whose son’s mouth I heard what you shall hear)—­the two fell to argument about the true faith to be held—­after words enough, ‘Well,’ said the Unitarian, as winding up the controversy with an amicable smile—­’at least let us hope we are both engaged in the pursuit of Truth!’—­’Pursuit do you say?’ cried the other, ’here am I with my years eighty and odd—­if I haven’t found Truth by this time where is my chance, pray?’ My own Ba, if I have not already decided, alas for me and the solemn words that are to help!  Though in another point of view there would be some luxurious feeling, beyond the ordinary, in knowing one was kept safe to one’s heart’s good by yet another wall than the hitherto recognised ones.  Is there any parallel in the notion I once heard a man deliver himself of in the street—­a labourer talking with his friends about ’wishes’—­and this one wished, if he might get his wish, ’to have a nine gallon cask of strong ale set running that minute and his own mouth to be tied under it’—­the exquisiteness of the delight was to be in the security upon security,—­the being ‘tied.’  Now, Ba says I shall not be ‘chained’ if she can help!