“It is, by God’s mercy, in our power to attain a degree of self-government, which is essential to our own happiness, and contributes greatly to that of those around us.  Take care of over- excitement, and endeavour to keep a quiet mind (even for your health it is the best advice that can be given you):  your moral and spiritual improvement will then keep pace with the culture of your intellectual powers.

   “And now, madam, God bless you!

   “Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere friend,

   “ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Of this second letter, also, she spoke, and told me that it contained an invitation for her to go and see the poet if ever she visited the Lakes.  “But there was no money to spare,” said she, “nor any prospect of my ever earning money enough to have the chance of so great a pleasure, so I gave up thinking of it.”  At the time we conversed together on the subject we were at the Lakes.  But Southey was dead.

This “stringent” letter made her put aside, for a time, all idea of literary enterprise.  She bent her whole energy towards the fulfilment of the duties in hand; but her occupation was not sufficient food for her great forces of intellect, and they cried out perpetually, “Give, give,” while the comparatively less breezy air of Dewsbury Moor told upon her health and spirits more and more.  On August 27, 1837, she writes:—­

“I am again at Dewsbury, engaged in the old business,—­teach, teach, teach . . . When will you come home?  Make haste!  You have been at Bath long enough for all purposes; by this time you have acquired polish enough, I am sure; if the varnish is laid on much thicker, I am afraid the good wood underneath will be quite concealed, and your Yorkshire friends won’t stand that.  Come, come.  I am getting really tired of your absence.  Saturday after Saturday comes round, and I can have no hope of hearing your knock at the door, and then being told that ‘Miss E. is come.’  Oh, dear! in this monotonous life of mine, that was a pleasant event.  I wish it would recur again; but it will take two or three interviews before the stiffness—­the estrangement of this long separation—­will wear away.”

About this time she forgot to return a work-bag she had borrowed, by a messenger, and in repairing her error she says:—­“These aberrations of memory warn me pretty intelligibly that I am getting past my prime.”  AEtat 21!  And the same tone of despondency runs through the following letter:—­