dne's hair close to her cheeks for me. Have _you_ known Nonnus,
... _you_ who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think? For
it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and
humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of
experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and
the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and
deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none
the older for it all!--yes, and being besides a man of genius and
working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away
from an end. Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a
lop-sided mind--did he not? He ought to have known _you_. And _I_ who
do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to assume the
knowledge of you, my dear friend)--_I_ do not mean to use that word
'humiliation' in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any
_painful_ way, ... because I never for a moment did, or _could_, you
know,--never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over
praised me, which forced another personal feeling in. Otherwise it has
always been quite pleasant to me to be 'startled and humiliated'--and
more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....

Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to
you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring
on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a
friend with you 'from Italy' ... 'from Rome,' and commended me for my
'kindness and considerateness' in changing Tuesday to Friday ...
(wasn't it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the
visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to
be--I mean, as is most convenient 'for the nonce' to you and your
friend--because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience,
to your other friend of this ilk,

E.B.B.

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that
your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off
Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my
coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and _I_ might
call another time! And you are NOT, NOT my 'other fri