believe--and the rest is with God--whose finger I see
every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask
leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?

God bless you--do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it
costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as
truthfuller--this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not
have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of
commission with _Hood_,--blame _them_, tell me about them, and
meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,

R.B.

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

Monday.
[Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]

But I never _did_ strike you or touch you--and you are not in earnest
in the complaint you make--and this is really all I am going to say
to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part,
while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go
deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to
bear without deprecation:--as when, for instance, you talk of being
'grateful' to _me_!!--Well! I will try that there shall be no more of
it--no more provocation of generosities--and so, (this once) as you
express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you--except for
reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.
Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook
literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was
roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember
he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered
that nobody was to be excepted--and thus he was quite right in
resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were
quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?
Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins
and yours gladly, to get into the _Hood_ poems which have delighted me
so--and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and
most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of
death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with
all its beauty and significance!--and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of
the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in
them, and grace of every kind--and with that beautiful and musical use