f your least desire, much
more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal,
among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My
whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely
cut down) was long ago calculated--and it supposed _you_, the finding
such an one as you, utterly impossible--because in calculating one
goes upon _chances_, not on providence--how could I expect you? So for
my own future way in the world I have always refused to care--any one
who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did
once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I
now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and
who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events
would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the
Solicitor-Generalship,--such an one need not very much concern himself
beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near
this life, all changes--and at a word, I will do all that ought to be
done, that every one used to say could be done, and let 'all my powers
find sweet employ' as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be
got--not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away,
and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news--at Pisa where
one may live for some L100 a year--while, lo, I seem to remember, I
_do_ remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those
pounds for any play that might suit him--to say nothing of Mr. Colburn
saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner 'a novel on
the subject of _Napoleon_'! So may one make money, if one does not
live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess's
Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one's faculty.

Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest--all you shall say
will be best--I am yours--

Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and
will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!

R.B.

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

[Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]

I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it
is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain--and you are
waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am
happy--but ungrateful nowhere--and I thank you from my
heart--profo