aces and persons in
Robert Southey's urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord
Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after
moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to
our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme.
Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in
fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable
purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should
not sufficiently stand abreast here in Europe, to justify and
necessitate the establishment of an European review--journal
rather--(the 'Foreign Review,' so called, touching only the summits of
the hills) a journal which might be on a level with the intelligent
readers of all the countries of Europe, and take all the rising
reputations of each, with the national light on them as they rise,
into observation and judgment. If nobody can do this, it is a pity I
think to do so much less--both in France and England--to snatch up a
French book from over the Channel as ever and anon they do in the
_Athenaeum_, and say something prodigiously absurd of it, till people
cry out 'oh oh' as in the House of Commons.

Oh--oh--and how wise I am to-day, as if I were a critic myself!
Yesterday I was foolish instead--for I couldn't get out of my head all
the evening how you said that you would come 'to see a candle held up
at the window.' Well! but I do not mean to love you any more just
now--so I tell you plainly. Certainly I will not. I love you already
too much perhaps. I feel like the turning Dervishes turning in the sun
when you say such words to me--and I _never shall_ love you any
'less,' because it is too much to be made less of.

And you write to-morrow? and will tell me how you are? honestly will
tell me? May God bless you, most dear!

I am yours--'Tota tua est'

BA.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]

How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent?
Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard--the
speaker had _tried_ words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not
reflect that he did not even try--so with me now, that loving you, Ba,
with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide
wondering gratitude and veneration, I p