of that'--, now it is
mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole
consolation of it at once, _now_--I will be confident that, if I obey
you, I shall get no wrong for it--if, endeavouring to spare you
fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed
'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you;
you will never say to yourself--so I said--'the "generous impulse"
_has_ worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work--this was to be
expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle
has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to _you_, one
_you_ may try and overcome'--and I shall be there, and ready--ten
years hence as now--if alive.

One final word on the other matters--the 'worldly matters'--I shall
own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because--because _that
would be_ the _one_ poor sacrifice I could make you--one I would
cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless
'sweet habitude of living'--this absolute independence of mine, which,
if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which
I have fought so many good battles to preserve--for that has
happened, too--this light rational life I lead, and know so well that
I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than--what you know--but
I _would_ give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose
disappointment might re-act on you--and I should break no promise to
myself--the money getting would not be for the sake of _it_; 'the
labour not for that which is nought'--indeed the necessity of doing
this, if at all, _now_, was one of the reasons which make me go on to
that _last request of all_--at once; one must not be too old, they
say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure
that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to
spare--because along with what you have thought _genius_ in me, is
certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried
it in various ways, just to be sure that I _was_ a little magnanimous
in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews
and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago--in
the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most
laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I
'_did_' for my old French master, and he published--'_that_ was really
an useful work'!--So that when