within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows.  So the medical people gave me opium—­a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether—­and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,—­because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful.  Such a nervous system I have—­so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually.  But slowly and gradually something may be done—­and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance—­no!  Now think of my writing all this to you!—­

And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough.  Shall I have a letter to make me glad?  She will talk, talk, talk ... and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... you:—­a forlorn hope indeed!  There’s a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!

Your head ... is it ... how is it? tell me.  And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach you ... in what I said about the letter.

May God bless you, best and dearest.  If you are the compensation blessed is the evil that fell upon me:  and that, I can say before God.

Your BA.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday.
[Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]

If I said you ‘gave me pain’ in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest—­by giving yourself, in me, pain—­being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart:  and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called—­in this very letter—­’generous’ &c.  Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion.  I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of gratitude already is beyond expression.

All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier.  ’Slowly and gradually’ what may not be done?  Then see the bright weather while I write—­lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song—­there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps—­and then comes what shall come—­