say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage
with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I
believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival
we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains
uncertain--_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a
good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself
the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must.
I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I
see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful
place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family.
Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank God I am going
home at last.

How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask
me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that
part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise
of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding
me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough.
Well--we do not know what _may_ happen! I _may_ (even that is
probable) read to you again. But now--ah, my dear friend--if you could
imagine me such as I am!--you would not think I could visit you! Yet
I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home
and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than
anything--I know it will! And if it does not, it will be _well_ even
so.

I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last week, where I
have a 'House of Clouds,'[57] which papa likes so much that he would
wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock
in one room--that's another objection. How are your clocks? Do they
go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?

I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do
give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and mine. I wish I heard of
you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you!

Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

_To H.S. Boyd_
August 31, 1831 [_sic_].

Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last breath at Torquay,
for your kindness about the Gregory, besides the kind note itself. It
is, however, too late. We go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow;
and the carriage which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand
springs has actually arrived. You are not