e at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my
favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting
flattery in the notes--yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and
what the writer's end is--(to have it supposed I, and the others
named--Talfourd, for instance--ARE his friends and helpers)--he
condescends to _further_ it by such a notice, written with that
observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid
Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie--_so_ clever but _so_
wicked'!--a kind of _D'Orsay's_ praise--while to the rest of his
readers, a few depreciatory epithets--slight sneers convey his real
sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an
article of him once a quarter and would _expect_ notice. I think I
hear Chorley--'You know, I _cannot_ praise such a book--it _is_ too
bad'--as if, as if--oh, it makes one sicker than having written
'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for
_his_ account of the matter. Meantime nobody will read his foolish
notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own
Ba--to-morrow makes amends to R.B.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]

How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them
nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away--and
_that_ was _your_ fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell
me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the
flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and
all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are
out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange
the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave
between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you
what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the
Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from
my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You
had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them
they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought
it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them,
cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into
water--but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under
a m