want—­(being a king or queen)—­provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to—­high motives supposed, at all events—­whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave to black your shoe in the dusty street ’purely for the honour of serving your Excellency’ you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself without a ‘grano’ or two—­(six of which, about, make a farthing)—­Now do you not see!  Where so little is to be got, why offer much more?  If a man knows that ... but I am teaching you!  All I mean is, that, in Benedick’s phrase, ‘the world must go on.’  He who honestly wants his wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his help-meat (not ’help mete for him’)—­he shall assuredly find a girl of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to mortify, who would be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a ’Every Lady Her Own Market-Woman, Being a Table of’ &c. &c.—­then, I say he is—­

Bless you, dearest—­the clock strikes—­and time is none—­but—­bless you!

Your own R.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday 4. p.m.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]

I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning—­and now I have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves.  I hoped to return from Town earlier.  But I can say something—­and Monday will make amends.

‘For ever’ and for ever I do love you, dearest—­love you with my whole heart—­in life, in death—­

Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon’s—­who had a little to forgive in my slack justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind self—­and I went, also, to Moxon’s—­who said something about my number’s going off ’rather heavily’—­so let it!

Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to ‘acts’ first or last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. Let me get done with these, and better things will follow.

Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest—­I have you ever in my thoughts—­And on Monday, remember, I am to see you.

Your own R.B.

See what I cut out of a Cambridge Advertiser[1] of the 24th—­to make you laugh!

[Footnote 1:  The cutting enclosed is:—­’A Few Rhymes for the Present Christmas’ by J. Purchas, Esq., B.A.  It is headed by several quotations, the first of which is signed ‘Elizabeth B. Barrett:’ 

’This age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.’

This is followed by extracts from Pindar, ‘Lear,’ and the Hon. Mrs. Norton.]

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]

Yes, indeed, I have ‘observed that way’ in you, and not once, and not twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,—­and almost every time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the reflection that that is the way for making all sorts of mistakes dependent on and issuing in exaggeration.  It is the very way!—­the highway.