birds singing in them three hours afterwards!  And, in that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were killed on the Malvern Hills—­each sealed to death in a moment with a sign on the chest which a common seal would cover—­only the sign on them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood.  So I get ‘possessed’ sometimes with the effects of these impressions, and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree—­and oh!—­how amusing and instructive all this is to you!  When my father came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the lightning, he was quite angry and called ’it disgraceful to anybody who had ever learnt the alphabet’—­to which I answered humbly that ’I knew it was’—­but if I had been impertinent, I might have added that wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it?  Don’t you think so in a measure? non obstantibus Bradbury and Evans?  There’s a profane question—­and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess—­I except the Duchess and her peers—­and be sure she will be the world’s Duchess and received as one of your most striking poems.  Full of various power the poem is....  I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me—­but though I want the conclusion, I don’t wish for it; and in this, am reasonable for once!  You will not write and make yourself ill—­will you? or read ‘Sybil’ at unlawful hours even?  Are you better at all?  What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day

I am yours,

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]

Very well—­I shall say no more on the subject—­though it was not any piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your over-kindness exactly—­I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind, and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest obligation.  I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom your well-being is of deeper interest than to me.  Well, if that be so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of proving serviceable to you; nor set yourself against any little irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the beginning; and you may say, if you like, ’how I shall delight those friends, if I can make this newest one grateful’—­and, as from the known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen ‘Duchesses’:  why ought I not to say this when it is so true?  Besides, people profess as much to their merest friends—­for I have been looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so