reatment.

Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it
without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being
told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears--(I never saw him face to
face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and
he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it.
Well, then! if I were to say that _I heard it from you yourself_, how
would you answer? _And it was so._ Why, are you not aware that these
are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have
believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.

And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and
tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little
clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly
because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I
was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the
pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses
written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them,
but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like
manner--and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural
inclination--but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick
and dark.

Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they _do_, are
they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them _un_fulfilled? Oh,
this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost
believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of
the window--at least, for me.

Of course you are _self-conscious_--How could you be a poet otherwise?
Tell me.

Ever faithfully yours,

E.B.B.

And was the little book written with Mr. Mill, pure metaphysics, or
what?

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

Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].

Dear Miss Barrett,--I seem to find of a sudden--surely I knew
before--anyhow, I _do_ find now, that with the octaves on octaves of
quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp
with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you
touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this
morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as
they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do!
See now, this sad feeling is