At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me this week, was forgotten, (not by me) forgotten, and detained, so, from the post—­a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.

For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to stay.  In the first place you were keeping your father ‘in a maze,’ as you said yourself—­and then, even without that, I never know what o’clock it is ... never.  Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a dream—­which I do—­time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go forward.  The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I leave it in the drawer—­and the clocks all round strike out of hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another in a confusion.  So you know more of time than I do or can.

Till Monday then!  I send the ‘Ricordi’ to take care of the rest ... of mine.  It is a touching story—­and there is an impracticable nobleness from end to end in the spirit of it.  How slow (to the ear and mind) that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers.  Yet Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli’s prose can walk and strike as well as float and faint.

The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps—­

Now you will not say a word.  My excuse is that you had nothing to remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how much too much!

If I could be too much

Your

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]

I was happy, so happy before!  But I am happier and richer now.  My love—­no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend—­I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair—­comforting me, blessing me.

Let me write to-morrow—­when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever—­To-morrow I will write.

May God bless you, my own, my precious—­

I am all your own

R.B.

I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one is less liable to observation and comment.

Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening?  And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]

See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute!  Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be?  Be it well done, or badly—­there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time!  And our names will go together—­be read together.  In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet—­but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much—­does it not please you?—­I thought I was to figure in that cold Quarterly all by myself, (for he writes for it)—­but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good.  He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours.  Say you are pleased!