the other!  By the way I forgot yesterday to tell you how Mr. Burges’s ‘apt remark’ did amuse me.  And Mr. Kenyon who said much the same words to me last week in relation to this very Wordsworth junior, writhed, I am sure, and wished the ingenious observer with the lost plays of AEschylus—­oh, I seem to see Mr. Kenyon’s face!  He was to have come to tell me how you all behaved at dinner that day, but he keeps away ... you have given him too much to think of perhaps.

I heard from Miss Mitford to-day that Mr. Chorley’s hope is at an end in respect to the theatre, and (I must tell you) she praises him warmly for his philosophy and fortitude under the disappointment.  How much philosophy does it take,—­please to instruct me,—­in order to the decent bearing of such disasters?  Can I fancy one, shorter than you by a whole head of the soul, condescending to ‘bear’ such things?  No, indeed.

Be good and kind, and do not work at the ‘Tragedy’ ... do not.

So you and I have written out all the paper in London!  At least, I send and send in vain to have more envelopes ‘after my kind,’ and the last answer is, that a ’fresh supply will arrive in eight days from Paris, and that in the meanwhile they are quite out in the article.’  An awful sign of the times, is this famine of envelopes ... not to speak of the scarcity of little sheets:—­and the augurs look to it all of course.

For my part I think more of Chiappino—­Chiappino holds me fast.

But I must let you go—­it is too late.  This dearest letter, which you sent me!  I thank you for it with ever so much dumbness.  May God bless you and keep you, and make you happy for me.

Your BA.

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]

How I get to understand this much of Law—­that prior possession is nine points of it!  Just because your infinite adroitness got first hold of the point of view whence our connection looks like ‘a dream’ ...  I find myself shut out of my very own, unable to say what is oftenest in my thought; whereas the dear, miraculous dream you were, and are, my Ba!  Only, vanish—­that you will never!  My own, and for ever!

Yesterday I read the poor, inconceivably inadequate notice in the People’s Journal.  How curiously wrong, too, in the personal guesses!  Sad work truly.  For my old friend Mrs. Adams—­no, I must be silent:  the lyrics seem doggerel in its utter purity.  And so the people are to be instructed in the new age of gold!  I heard two days ago precisely what I told you—­that there was a quarrel, &c. which this service was to smooth over, no doubt.  Chorley told me, in a hasty word only, that all was over, Mr. Webster would not have anything to do with his play.  The said W. is one of the poorest of poor creatures, and as Chorley was certainly forewarned, forearmed I will hope him to have been likewise—­still it is very