vellous to think how
it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London and
ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after
more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very
good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his
eternal hunt for houses--the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing
to him, all except the sublimity--intending very seriously to take
the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't tell
where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular
that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall
be heartily glad, at least I _think_ so, for it is possible that
the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very
agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and
we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and
books. I am so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at
the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting,
and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair. I
remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and
flowers (I do that still--I still believe they have a certain animal
susceptibility to pleasure and pain; 'it is my creed,' and, being
Wordsworth's besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and
tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love
in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should
have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to
say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in
boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I
have written a great deal of nonsense--'Je m'en doute.'

Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and
was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant
air which I always fancy people 'just from the country' put on towards
us hapless Londoners.

But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day
long at being in London. _There are many advantages here_, as I say to
myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see
even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at
the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real
live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and
sunshine of paradise