so _your_ Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Thursday.
[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]

As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the
beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me--'the late
Robert Hall--when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate
of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of
cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't
kiss Mind"! May _you_ not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that
mere intellectual endowments--though incontestably of the loftiest
character--mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's--cannot be
_kissed_--nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities,
those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot,
if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us
died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!
and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street,
suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise
an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it
augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be
_wholly, exclusively_ based on such perishable attractions as the
sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to
know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent
with this--some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some--' Would he not
say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our
post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect
joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing--dearest,
dearest Ba--let me say more to-morrow--only this now, that you--ah,
what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you--till to-morrow
when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, _lengthen_ it!)

Ever your own.

'Hawthorn'[1]--to show how Spring gets on!

[Footnote 1: Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.]

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]

If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours,
ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices
without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in
your t