which represent
to you the Places as well as if you went there, without the trouble of
going. I am sure wiser men, with keener _out_sight and _in_sight would
see what no Pictures could give: but this I know is always the case with
me: this is my last Voyage abroad, I believe: unless I go to see
Raffaelle's Madonna at Dresden, which no other Picture can represent than
itself: unless Dante's Beatrice.

I don't think you ever told me if you had got, or read, Spedding's two
first volumes of Bacon. My opinion is not the least altered of the Case:
and (as I anticipated) Spedding has brooded over his Egg so long he has
rather addled it. Thompson told me that the very Papers he adduces to
clear Bacon in Essex's Business, rather go against him: I haven't seen
any Notice of the Book in any Review but Fraser: where Donne (of course)
was convinced, etc., and I hear that even the wise old Spedding is
_mortified_ that he has awakened so little Interest for his Hero. You
know his Mortification would not be on _his own_ score. His last Letter
to me (some months ago) seemed to indicate that he could scarce lift up
his Pen to go on--he had as yet, he said, written nothing of volumes 3
and 4. But I suppose he _will_ in time. I say this Life of his wasted
on a vain work is a Tragedy pathetic as Antigone or Iphigenia. Of
Tennyson I hear but little: and I have ceased to look forward to any
future Work of his. Thackeray seems dumb as a gorged Blackbird too: all
growing old!

I have lost my sister Kerrich, the only one of my family I much cared
for, or who much cared for me.

But (not to dwell on what cannot be helped, and to which my talking of
all growing old led me) I see in last week's Athenaeum great Praise of a
new Volume of Poems by Jean Ingelow. The Reviewer talks of a 'new Poet,'
etc., quite unaware that some dozen years ago the 'new Poet' published a
Volume (as you may remember) with as distinct Indications of sweet,
fresh, and original Genius as anything he adduces from this second
Volume. I remember writing a sort of Review, when about you at Bramford,
which I sent to Mitford, to try and give the Book a little move: but
Mitford had just quitted the Gentleman's Magazine, and I tore up my
Paper. Your Elizabeth knows (I think) all about this Lady: who, I
suppose, is connected with Lincolnshire: for the Reviewer speaks of some
of the Poems as relating to that Coast--Shipwrecks, etc. I was told that
Tennyson was writing