me a little of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition, and that if I pleased to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I should be as well as ever I was, in a month!...  But where is the need of talking of it?  What I wished to say was this—­that if I get better or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the generous interest and feeling you have spent on me—­wasted on me I was going to write—­but I would not provoke any answering—­and in one obvious sense, it need not be so.  I never shall forget these things, my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly.  God’s goodness!—­I believe in it, as in His sunshine here—­which makes my head ache a little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people gayer—­it does me good too in a different way.  And so, may God bless you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!—­In the meantime you do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.

E.B.B.

How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book?  All I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my ‘Prometheus’ for me—­and that I was not disappointed in you, these two things on two occasions.  I do trust that your head is better.

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, July 28, 1845.]

How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say all?  I am most grateful, most happy—­most happy, come what will!

Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow—­before Wednesday when I am to see you?  I will not hide from you that my head aches now; and I have let the hours go by one after one—­I am better all the same, and will write as I say—­’Am I better’ you ask!

Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 31, 1845.]

In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human capacity—­but as I began, so I shall end.  I shall believe you remember what I am forced to remember—­you who do me the superabundant justice on every possible occasion,—­you will never do me injustice when I sit by you and talk about Italy and the rest.

—­To-day I cannot write—­though I am very well otherwise—­but I shall soon get into my old self-command and write with as much ’ineffectual fire’ as before:  but meantime, you will write to me, I hope—­telling me how you are?  I have but one greater delight in the world than in hearing from you.