‘many-sidedness’ is certainly no word for him.  The effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather bends to a phase of humanity and literature than contains it—­than comprehends it.  Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things:  universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the contrary, sublimely consistent.  A church tower may stand between the mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast:  but the willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether ... as different as a willow-tree from a church tower.

Ah, what nonsense!  There is only one truth for me all this time, while I talk about truth and truth.  And do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you—­which is too much, perhaps.  Shall I tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me—­the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy ... and only I know what was behind—­the long wilderness without the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding.  Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—­not you—­but my own fate?  Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do?  And you love me more, you say?—­Shall I thank you or God?  Both,—­indeed—­and there is no possible return from me to either of you!  I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God.  How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you?  How will you ever see it as I feel it?  I ask myself in vain.

Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others—­that is all I could ask you with any disquiet as to the granting of it—­May God bless you!—­

Your

BA.

But you have the review now—­surely?

The Morning Chronicle attributes the authorship of ‘Modern Poets’ (our article) to Lord John Manners—­so I hear this morning.  I have not yet looked at the paper myself.  The Athenaeum, still abominably dumb!—­

R.B. to E.B.B.

                              Saturday.
                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]

This is no letter—­love,—­I make haste to tell you—­to-morrow I will write.  For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an old, old friend he is, beside—­so—­you must understand my defection, when only this scrap reaches you to-night!  Ah, love,—­you are my unutterable blessing,—­I discover you, more of you, day by day,—­hour by hour, I do think!—­I am entirely yours,—­one gratitude, all my soul becomes when I see you over me as now—­God bless my dear, dearest.