I have made up my mind to let you make up yours, without urging you further upon the subject; but I must reply to one thing.  You say to me, could you bring with you a strip of sea-shore, a corner of blue sky, or half a dozen waves, you would not hesitate.  Allow my to say that whereas by the sea-side or under a bright sky your society enhances the pleasure derived from them, I now desire it (not having these) as delightful in itself, increasing my enjoyment in the beauties of nature, and compensating for their absence.  But I have done; only if Mrs. K——­ has held out a false hope to me, she is ferocious and atrocious, and that is all, and so pray tell her.

I had left myself so little room to tell you about this disagreeable business of the Age newspaper, in my last, that I thought what I said of it would be almost unintelligible to you.  I do not really deserve the sympathy you express for my feelings in the matter, for partly from being totally ignorant of the nature and extent of my injuries—­having never, of course, read a line of that scurrilous newspaper—­and partly from my indifference to everything that is said about me, I really have felt no annoyance or distress on the subject, beyond, as I told you, one moment’s feminine indignation at a coarse expression which was repeated to me, but which in strict truth did not and could not apply to me; and considerable regret that my father should have touched Mr. Westmacott even with a stick, or a “pair of tongs.”  That individual intends bringing a suit for damages, which makes me very anxious to have my play and rhymes published, if I can get anything for them, as I think the profits derived from my “scribbles” (as good Queen.  Anne called her letters) would be better bestowed in paying for that little ebullition of my father’s temper than in decorating my tiny sanctum.  What does my poor, dear father expect, but that I shall be bespattered if I am to live on the highway?

Mr. Murray has been kind enough to say he will publish my very original compositions, and I am preparing them for him.  I am sorry to say I have heard nothing from my brother; of him I have heard, for his whereabout is known and talked of—­so much so, indeed, that my father says further concealment is at once useless and ridiculous.  I may therefore now tell you that he is at this moment in Spain, trying to levy troops for the cause of the constitutionalists.  I need not tell you, dearest H——­, how much I regret this, because you will know how deeply I must disapprove of it.  I might have thought any young man Quixotic who thus mistook a restless, turbulent spirit, eager to embrace a quarrel not his own, for patriotism and self-devotion to a sacred cause; but in my brother, who had professed aims and purposes so opposed to tumult and war and bloodshed, it seems to me a subject of much more serious regret.  Heaven only knows what plans he has formed for the future!  His