And for me, no, and yet yes,—­I will say this much; that I am not inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here—­the justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to come.  Which is true enough to be unanswerable, if you please—­or I should not say it. ‘As I began, so I shall end—­’ Did you, as I hope you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me?  When you were gone, he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes—­brought the bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after cake.  And I forgot the basket once again.

And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of

          ’those schismatiques
    of Amsterdam’

whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent church principle.  No—­not ‘schismatical,’ I hope, hating as I do from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ, which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this Christianity so called—­and caring very little for most dogmas and doxies in themselves—­too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when they send me ‘New Testaments’ to learn from, with very kind intentions)—­and believing that there is only one church in heaven and earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms.  But I used to go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting chapel of the Congregationalists—­from liking the simplicity of that praying and speaking without books—­and a little too from disliking the theory of state churches.  There is a narrowness among the dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts of their souls:  but it seems to me clear that they know what the ‘liberty of Christ’ means, far better than those do who call themselves ‘churchmen’; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher ground.  And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it.  But it is not my fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out—­as I intended—­as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence.  My sisters said of the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they ’never saw such flowers anywhere—­anywhere here in London—­’ and therefore if I had thought so myself before, it was not so wrong of me.  I put your roses, you see, against my letter, to make it seem less dull—­and yet I do not forget what you say about caring to hear from me—­I mean, I do not affect to forget it.

May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.

E.B.B.