the fixed stars before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and—­what other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all, though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without it;—­perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause.  I have been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late—­I have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my ‘Luria’ and much besides.  I thought I never could be unwell.  Just now all of it is gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here.  And do you know I said ’this must go, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss Barrett why this and this is not done,’—­but I mean to tell you all, or more of the truth, because you call me ‘flatterer,’ so that my eyes widened again!  I, and in what?  And of whom, pray? not of you, at all events,—­of whom then? Do tell me, because I want to stand with you—­and am quite in earnest there.  And ‘The Flight of the Duchess,’ to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day’s notice,—­the true stuff and story is all to come, the ‘Flight,’ and what you allude to is the mere introduction—­but the Magazine has passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some ‘Bell’ or other—­it is one of my Dramatic Romances.  So is a certain ‘Saul’ I should like to show you one day—­an ominous liking—­for nobody ever sees what I do till it is printed.  But as you do know the printed little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have really done,—­written in the portfolio there,—­though that would be far enough from this me, that wishes to you now.  I should like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!

I have read your letter through again.  Does this clear up all the difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of ’reproaching you for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else’—­but that ... why, ‘that’ which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay.  I will tell you—­Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his soul—­Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of glebe-land,—­and I could say such—­’could,’—­the plague of it!  So no more at present from your loving....  Or, let me tell you I am going to see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.—­that you do not tell me how you are, and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ...  I shall not see you—­not—­not—­not—­what ‘knots’ to untie!  Surely the wind that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,—­that is South West, surely!  God bless you, and me in that—­and do write to me soon, and tell me who was the ‘flatterer,’ and how he never was