always find you alike, and ever like yourself, that I seemed to discern a depth, when you spoke of ‘some days’ and what they made uneven where all is agreeable to me.  Do not, now, deprive me of a right—­a right ... to find you as you are; get no habit of being cheerful with me—­I have universal sympathy and can show you a SIDE of me, a true face, turn as you may.  If you are cheerful ... so will I be ... if sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while behind, and propping up, any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary.  As for my question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand that neither:  I trust in the eventual consummation of my—­shall I not say, our—­hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or prospectively, affects me—­how it affects me!  Will you write again? Wednesday, remember!  Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three next days after.  I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor.  Why should I trouble you about ‘Pomfret.’

And Luria ... does it so interest you?  Better is to come of it.  How you lift me up!—­

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday.
[Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]

How you overcome me as always you do—­and where is the answer to anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?  But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake you as far even as you say here and even ‘for a moment.’  I did not write any of that letter in a ‘doubt’ of you—­not a word....  I was simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I should not have looked back)—­and so coming to tell you, by a natural association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours.  Of course I acknowledge it to be yours, ... that high reason of no reason—­I acknowledged it to be yours (didn’t I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.  And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather be cared for in that unreasonable way, than for the best reason in the world.  But all that was history and philosophy simply—­was it not?—­and not doubt of you.

The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ... that I never have doubted you—­ah, you know!—­I felt from the beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would have trusted you to make a path for my soul—­that, you know.  I felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or wrote—­and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the nature of your own feelings.  If you