writes:

"Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone--his wife is in
the country where he will join her as soon as the book's last proof
sheets are corrected.... He was all kindness, and talked like his own
self while he made me tea--and would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge
with me on my way home."

She writes:

"I had a letter yesterday from Charles Hemans, the son of Felicia, ...
who says his mother's memory is surrounded to him 'with almost a
divine lustre,'... and is not that better than your tradition about
Shelley's son? and is it not pleasant to know that the noble,
pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our country, should be so
loved and comprehended by one, at least, of her own house?"

Under date of August 25, Miss Barrett has been moved to write out the
pathetic story of her brother Edward's death. He had accompanied her to
Torquay,--he, "the kindest, the noblest, the dearest, and when the time
came for him to return I, weakened by illness, could not master my spirits
or drive back my tears," and he then decided not to leave her. "And ten
days from that day," she continued, "the boat left the shore which never
returned--and he had left me! For three days we waited,--oh, that awful
agony of three days!... Do not notice what I have written to you, my
dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being--I never could
speak or write of it...."

But he writes her that "better than being happy in her happiness, is it
to participate in her sorrow." And the very last day of that August he
writes that he has had such power over himself as to keep silent ... but
"Let me say now--this only once,--that I loved you from my soul, and gave
you my life, as much of it as you would take, and all that ... is
independent of any return on your part." She assures him that he has
followed the most generous of impulses toward her, "yet I cannot help
adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part." She
confesses how deeply she is affected by his words, "but what could I
speak," she questions, "that would not be unjust to you?... Your life! if
you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it, what should I put in
but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you
which it would not be ungenerous to give?"

There was a partial plan that Miss Barrett should pass that next winter in
Pisa, but owing to the strange and