wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so
cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of
natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night
those bats come sailing ... without a sound--and go ... you cannot
guess where!--fade with the night-blackness!

You have not been well--which is my first thought if not my first
word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking
of, if I did not think of _you_ ... dear--dearest! 'As the doves fly
to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty,
as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up
straight to God ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me--now there
is _you_--only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore
any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are
to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you
know at all what _I_ am,--and what I should be but for you.

So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the
lizards! love me as you love the efts--and I will believe in _you_ as
you believe ... in AElian--Will _that_ do?

Your own--

Say how you are when you write--_and write_.

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

Tuesday Morning.

I this minute receive the Review--a poor business, truly! Is there a
reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical
High-place to hold forth?--I have only glanced over the article
however. Well, one day _I_ am to write of you, dearest, and it must
come to something rather better than _that_!

I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.
I am trusting to hear from you--

Your R.B.

And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in
the _New Quarterly_ 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without
any sympathy for a human being!'--Then, for newts and efts at all
events!

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

Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]

But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you
not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's
supposed tether without danger--there is the distance so palpably
between the most audacious step _there_, and th