there is no habit ... do you understand?  I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps—­and certainly everybody in the house is not equally prudent!—­but I did shrink from running any risk with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on.  And was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it? anything to startle you?  Still I do perfectly see that whether new or old, what it involves may well be unpleasant to you—­and that (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new increasing unpleasantness.  We have both been carried too far perhaps, by late events and impulses—­but it is never too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, not to answer this, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly ‘that particular contingency’ which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you.  Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles!  Judge.  From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... you....  When I told you once ... or twice ... that ‘no human influence should’ &c. &c., ...  I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you—­and now that I turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ... there.  I ask you therefore to consider ‘that contingency’ well—­not forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we see the harm done by the fire.  And so, and now ... is it not advisable for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ... now that your book is through the press?  What if you go next week?  I leave it to you.  In any case I entreat you not to answer this—­neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may call perhaps vacillation—­only that I stand excused (I do not say justified) before my own moral sense.  May God bless you.  If you go, I shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the meantime.  I write all this as fast as I can to have it over.  What I ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our sakes.  If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I shall understand that by your not going ... or you may say ‘no’ in a word ... for I require no ‘protestations’ indeed—­and you may trust to me ... it shall be as you choose. You will consider my happiness most by considering your own ... and that is my last word.

Wednesday morning.—­I did not say half I thought about the poems yesterday—­and their various power and beauty will be striking and surprising to your most accustomed readers.  ’St. Praxed’—­’Pictor Ignotus’—­’The Ride’—­’The Duchess’!—­Of the new poems I like supremely the first and last ... that ‘Lost Leader’ which strikes so broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget—­and