.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.

Yet He knows,--if the entireness of a gift means anything,--that I
have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul,
for this year and for other years. Let me be used _for_ you rather
than _against_ you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of
feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be
saved from it!--pray it for _me_ ... for _my_ sake rather than
_yours_. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to
me, what to-day you are--and that is all!--!

I am your own--

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

Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, January 5, 1846.]

Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you 'think of me'--I wonder
if you could misunderstand me in that?--As if my words or actions or
any of my ineffectual outside-self _should_ be thought of, unless to
be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your
mind--cared for, rather than thought about--no great harm can happen
to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you,
you will care for yourself; _my_self, best self!

Come, let us talk. I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to
see that fresh beautiful things are there--I suppose 'Delora' will
stand alone still--but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower
of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and
spotty yellow leaves,--all that, I love heartily--and there is good
sailor-speech in the 'Ben Capstan'--though he does knock a man down
with a 'crow-bar'--instead of a marling-spike or, even, a
belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and
individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder--his not
reprinting a quaint clever _real_ ballad, published before 'Delora,'
on the 'Merry Devil of Edmonton'--the first of his works I ever read.
No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which
was this line: 'When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'--good, is
it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, _is_ that 'Swineshead
Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of
concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under
a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c.
something to that effect. I suspect, _par parenthese_, you have found
out by thi