highest praises the other
day....

Now really I don't know why I should fancy you to be so deeply
interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary.
What I _do_ want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau's
mesmeric experience,[118] for a copy of which, in the last
'Athenaeum,' I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of
sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and
beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing
in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary
connection between Miss Martineau's cure and the power; and also I am
of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts
through her representations. There is a tone of exaltation which
will be observed upon, and one or two sentences are suggestive to
scepticism. I will send it to you when I get the number. I understand
that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled down from the
south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public
exposition, but could not prevail. Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her
visitor. He is fully a believer, she says, and affirms to having seen
the same phenomena in the East, but regards the whole subject with
_horror_. This still appears to be Mrs. Jameson's feeling, as you
know it is mine. Mrs. Jameson came again to this door with a note, and
overcoming by kindness, was let in on Saturday last; and sate with me
for nearly an hour, and so ran into what my sisters call 'one of my
sudden intimacies' that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of course
she won my affections through my vanity (Mr. Martin will be sure to
say, so I hasten to anticipate him) and by exaggerations about my
poetry; but really, and although my heart beat itself almost to pieces
for fear of seeing her as she walked upstairs, I do think I should
have liked her _without the flattery_. She is very light--has the
lightest of eyes, the lightest of complexions; no eyebrows, and what
looked to me like very pale red hair, and thin lips of no colour at
all. But with all this indecision of exterior the expression is
rather acute than soft; and the conversation in its principal
characteristics, analytical and examinative; throwing out no thought
which is not as clear as glass--critical, in fact, in somewhat of
an austere sense. I use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual
relation, for nothing in the world could be kinder, or more graciously
kin