As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance—­what a strange husk of a world!  How it looks to me like mandarin-life or something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin manners, ... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account of it.  As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying that many can look like him or talk like him or be like him.  I know enough to know otherwise.  When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind.  It is really true—­I am getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself.

But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music—­and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without being gathered.  Let Maynooth witness to it! if you think it worth while!

Ever yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

And is it nothing to be ’justified to one’s self in one’s resources?’ ‘That’s all,’ indeed!  For the ‘soul’s country’ we will have it also—­and I know how well the birds sing in it.  How glad I was by the way to see your letter!

R.B. to E.B.B.

                                Wednesday Morning.
                                [Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]

If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the ‘full stop’ after ‘Morning’ just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,—­and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it....

By this time you see what you have got in me—­You ask me questions, ‘if I like novels,’ ‘if the “Improvisatore” is not good,’ ’if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,’ and ’what I am devising—­play or poem,’—­and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths—­but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,—­in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning—­There is a story of D’Israeli’s, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,—­well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel—­and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,—­and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,—­and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop behind.  At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady’s uncle, ’in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself