[Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]

Think for me, speak for me, my dearest, my own!  You that are all great-heartedness and generosity, do that one more generous thing?

God bless you for

R.B.

What can it be you ask of me!—­’a boon’—­once my answer to that had been the plain one—­but now ... when I have better experience of—­No, now I have BEST experience of how you understand my interests; that at last we both know what is my true good—­so ask, ask! My own, now!  For there it is!—­oh, do not fear I am ’entangled’—­my crown is loose on my head, not nailed there—­my pearl lies in my hand—­I may return it to the sea, if I will!

What is it you ask of me, this first asking?

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, September 29, 1845.]

Then first, ... first, I ask you not to misunderstand.  Because we do not ... no, we do not ... agree (but disagree) as to ’what is your true good’ ... but disagree, and as widely as ever indeed.

The other asking shall come in its season ... some day before I go, if I go.  It only relates to a restitution—­and you cannot guess it if you try ... so don’t try!—­and perhaps you can’t grant it if you try—­and I cannot guess.

Cabins and berths all taken in the Malta steamer for both third and twentieth of October! see what dark lanterns the stars hold out, and how I shall stay in England after all as I think!  And thus we are thrown back on the old Gibraltar scheme with its shifting of steamers ... unless we take the dreary alternative of Madeira!—­or Cadiz!  Even suppose Madeira, ... why it were for a few months alone—­and there would be no temptation to loiter as in Italy.

Don’t think too hardly of poor Papa.  You have his wrong side ... his side of peculiar wrongness ... to you just now.  When you have walked round him you will have other thoughts of him.

Are you better, I wonder? and taking exercise and trying to be better?  May God bless you!  Tuesday need not be the last day if you like to take one more besides—­for there is no going until the fourth or seventh, ... and the seventh is the more probable of those two.  But now you have done with me until Tuesday.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, October 1, 1845.]

I have read to the last line of your ‘Rosicrucian’; and my scepticism grew and grew through Hume’s process of doubtful doubts, and at last rose to the full stature of incredulity ... for I never could believe Shelley capable of such a book (call it a book!), not even with a flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution.  Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date of the book, and to get up and travel to the other end of the room to confront it with other dates in the ‘Letters from Abroad’ ... (I, who never think of a date