It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world were away—­even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.

And so, once more—­may God bless you!

I am wholly yours—­

Tuesday, remember!  And say that you agree.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the forb—­no, unforbidden shelf—­wherein Voltaire pleases to say that ‘si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer’?  I feel, after reading these letters,—­as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or hearing from you,—­that if marriage did not exist, I should infallibly invent it.  I should say, no words, no feelings even, do justice to the whole conviction and religion of my soul—­and though they may be suffered to represent some one minute’s phase of it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the unrepresented, other minute’s, depth and breadth of love ... which let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way—­let me have the plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story must be listened to now, and the ’rights of it,’—­dearest, the love unspoken now you are to hear ’in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth ... at the hour of death, and’—­

If I did not know this was so,—­nothing would have been said, or sought for.  Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for, and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and, seen now, nothing.

I will care for it no more, dearest—­I am wedded to you now.  I believe no human being could love you more—­that thought consoles me for my own imperfection—­for when that does strike me, as so often it will, I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask ’What if it were a claim then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for what were in you—­do you like that way!’—­And I do not, Ba—­you, even, might not—­when people everyday buy improveable ground, and eligible sites for building, and don’t want every inch filled up, covered over, done to their hands!  So take me, and make me what you can and will—­and though never to be more yours, yet more like you, I may and must be—­Yes, indeed—­best, only love!