thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death,
heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me; and I know I have been
wasting and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with my
cursed ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of myself I am
offending against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me for better,
for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto, it was a
noble trade. I am stupid, and lose myself in what I write. I write
rather what answers to my feelings (which are sometimes sharp enough)
than express my present ones, for I am only flat and stupid. I am sure
you will excuse my writing any more, I am so very poorly.

I cannot resist transcribing three or four lines which poor Mary made
upon a picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an auction only one week
before she left home. They are sweet lines, and upon a sweet picture.
But I send them only as the last memorial of her.

VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. DA VINCI.

"Maternal Lady, with thy virgin-grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth, sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee."

You had her lines about the "Lady Blanch." You have not had some which
she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where
that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two
female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung in our room. 'Tis light
and pretty.

"Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place
Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace?
Come, fair and pretty, tell to me
Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be?
Thou pretty art and fair,
But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare.
No need for Blanch her history to tell,
Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well;
But when I look on thee, I only know
There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago,"

This is a little unfair, to tell so much about ourselves, and to advert
so little to your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of you all But
my own cares press pretty close upon me, and you can make allowance.
That you may go on gathering strength and peace is my next wish to
Mary's recovery.

I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. Supposing that Mary will
be well and able, there is another _ability_ which you may guess at,
which I cannot promise myself. In prudence we ought not to come. This
illness wil