sday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being
afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you!
Try to let it be long to you--will you? My consistency is wonderful.

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

Friday Morning.

As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review--indeed it was
foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?--You
shall not send it back--but on your table I shall find and take it
next Tuesday--_c'est convenu_! The other precious volume has not yet
come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to
carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!

I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a
scale for the Review's sake; and just now--there is no denying it, and
spite of all I have been incredulous about--it does seem that the fact
_is_ achieved and that I _do_ love you, plainly, surely, more than
ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why,
the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?--in the
heart's heart.

Rest--dearest--bless you--

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

Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]

Kindest and dearest you are!--that is 'my secret' and for the others,
I leave them to you!--only it is no secret that I should and must be
glad to have the words you sent with the book,--which I should have
seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I
not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of
critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the
dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of
human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on--it is the stamp
on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or
farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said
than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up
to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could
have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said
rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the
brain,--which is as true as truth can be. Then, I _shall have
'Pauline' in a day or two_--yes, I shall and must, and _will_.

The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that
name, seems indeed to