What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in them how near we are. You say that!—­not I.

Bad or good, you are better—­yes, ’better than the works and words’!—­though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of ‘Elegant Extracts’ from your letters.  See what blasphemy one falls into through a beginning of light speech!  It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for all Voltaire’s ... ‘ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas.’

Wiser—­because you will not go.  If you were going ... well!—­but there is no danger—­it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time as to be able to think—­and your ‘mission of humanity’ lies nearer—­’strictly private and confidential’? but not in Harley Street—­so if you go there, dearest, keep to the ‘one hour’ and do not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and made unwell again—­it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of excitement.  For Mr. Kenyon’s note, ... it was a great temptation to make a day of Friday—­but I resist both for Monday’s sake and for yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to another till you are tired completely.  I shall think of you so much the nearer for Mr. Kenyon’s note—­which is something gained.  In the meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so.  Ever dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better, and keep from being worse again—­I mean, of course, try to keep from being worse—­be wise ... and do not stay long in those hot Harley Street rooms.  Ah—­now you will think that I am afraid of the unicorns!—­

Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad—­which is delightful; I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of other times ... so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in them.  Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess—­it is a curious crossing.  And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be wanting in the ballad—­there is a gap, I fancy.

Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead of Saturday—­and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday—­it will be as well, not.  You met Alfred at the door—­he came up to me afterwards and observed that ‘at last he had seen you!’ ’Virgilium tantum vidi!’

As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter, and which you ‘stop’ yourself in saying ... I need not stop you in it....

And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night.  May God bless you, dearest, dearest.

I must be your own while He blesses me.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]