—­And ’I am kind’—­there again!  Do I not know what you mean by that?  Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my protesting, in other directions.  So I could not when I first saw you admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you, benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ... but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do? ... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you, which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week’s end,—­should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness does....

Now, I’ll tell you what it does deserve, and what it shall get.  Give me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I would ask you for ... one day!  Give me ... wait—­for your own sake, not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for your own sense of justice, and to say, so as my heart shall hear, that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you—­all precious that you are—­as may be given in a lock of your hair—­I will live and die with it, and with the memory of you—­this at the worst!  If you give me what I beg,—­shall I say next Tuesday ... when I leave you, I will not speak a word.  If you do not, I will not think you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and remember me one day—­when the power to deserve more may be greater ... never the will.  God supplies all things:  may he bless you, beloved!  So I can but pray, kissing your hand.

R.B.

Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel, for the love’s sake that it grew from.

The Chronicle was through Moxon, I believe—­Landor had sent the verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear.  I never in my life less cared about people’s praise or blame for myself, and never more for its influence on other people than now—­I would stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you—­yet not, after all, at poor Chorley’s expense whom your brother, I am sure, unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I corrected it after.  C. is of a different species to your brother, differently trained, looking different ways—­and for some of the peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance.  For ’Vulgarity’—­NO!  But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further acquaintance ... and,—­woe’s me—­will find that ‘assumption’s’ pertest self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr. K.’s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped onward far too readily.