I feel the distance between us now, indeed. I would to Heaven, my
dearest friend, that I could remind you in a manner more lively and
affectionate than this dull sheet of paper can put on, that you have a
Brother left. One bound to you by ties as strong as ever Nature forged.
By ties never to be broken, weakened, changed in any way--but to be
knotted tighter up, if that be possible, until the same end comes to
them as has come to these. That end but the bright beginning of a
happier union, I believe; and have never more strongly and religiously
believed (and oh! Forster, with what a sore heart I have thanked God for
it) than when that shadow has fallen on my own hearth, and made it cold
and dark as suddenly as in the home of that poor girl you tell me of. . . .
When you write to me again, the pain of this will have passed. No
consolation can be so certain and so lasting to you as that softened and
manly sorrow which springs up from the memory of the Dead. I read your
heart as easily as if I held it in my hand, this moment. And I know--I
_know_, my dear friend--that before the ground is green above him, you
will be content that what was capable of death in him, should lie
there. . . . I am glad to think it was so easy, and full of peace. What can
we hope for more, when our own time comes!--The day when he visited us
in our old house is as fresh to me as if it had been yesterday. I
remember him as well as I remember you. . . . I have many things to say,
but cannot say them now. Your attached and loving friend for life, and
far, I hope, beyond it. C. D." (8th of January, 1845.)

[96] "A Yorkshireman, who talks Yorkshire Italian with the drollest and
pleasantest effect; a jolly, hospitable excellent fellow; as odd yet
kindly a mixture of shrewdness and simplicity as I have ever seen. He is
the only Englishman in these parts who has been able to erect an English
household out of Italian servants, but he has done it to admiration. It
would be a capital country-house at home; and for staying in
'first-rate.' (I find myself inadvertently quoting _Tom Thumb_.) Mr.
Walton is a man of an extraordinarily kind heart, and has a
compassionate regard for Fletcher to whom his house is open as a home,
which is half affecting and half ludicrous. He paid the other day a
hundred pounds for him, which he knows he will never see a penny of
again." C. D. to J. F. (25th of January, 1845.)

[97] "Do you think," he wrote from Ronciglione on the 2