into your eyes; let them, and embrace each other: thank Heaven for what happiness you have, and after thinking a moment or two that you suffer in common with all mankind, hold it not a sin to regain your cheerfulness.

Your welfare is a delight to me which I cannot express. The moon is now shining full and brilliant; she is the same to me in matter that you are in spirit. If you were here, my dear sister, I could not pronounce the words which I can write to you from a distance. I have a tenderness for you and an admiration which I feel to be as great and more chaste than I have for any woman in the world. You may mention Fanny-her character is not formed; her identity does not press upon me as yours does. I hope from the bottom of my heart that I may one day feel as much for her as I do for you.

I know not how it is, my dear brother, I have never made any acquaintance of my own-nearly all through your medium; through you I know not only a sister but a glorious human being. And now I am talking of those to whom you have made me, I cannot forbear mentioning Haslam as a most kind and obliging and constant friend. His behaviour to Tom during my absence and since my return has endeared him to me forever, besides his anxiety about you.

To-morrow I shall call on your mother and exchange information with her. I intend to write you such columns that it will be impossible for me to keep any order or method in what I write; that

Mrs. Wylie.

will come first which is uppermost in my mind; not that which is uppermost in my heart. Besides, I should wish to give you a picture of our lives here, whenever by a touch I can do it.

I came by ship from Inverness, and was nine days at sea without being sick. A little qualm now and then put me in mind of you. However, as soon as you touch the shore, all the horrors of sickness are soon forgotten, as was the case with a lady on board, who could not hold her head up all the way. We had not been in the Thames an hour before her tongue began to some tune- -paying off, as it was fit she should, all old scores. I was the only Englishman on board. There was a downright Scotchman, who, hearing that there had been a bad crop of potatoes in England, had brought some triumphant specimens from Scotland. These he exhibited with natural pride to all the ignorant lightermen and watermen from the Nore to the Bridge. I fed upon beef all the way, not being able to eat the thick porridge which the ladies managed to manage, with large, awkward horn spoons into the bargain.

Reynolds has returned from a six weeks' enjoyment in Devonshire; he is well, and persuades me to publish my "Pot of Basil" as an answer to an attack made on me in "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." There have been two letters in my defence in the "Chronicle," and one in the "Examiner," copied from the Exeter paper, and written by Reynolds. I don't know who wrote those in the "Chronicle." This is a mere matter of the moment: I think I shall be among the English

See vol. II. p.25.

poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the attempt to crush me in the "Quarterly" has only brought me more into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, "I wonder the Quarterly' should cut its own throat!" It does me not the least harm in society to make me appear little and ridiculous: I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all due respect. He will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the rest, I feel that I make an impression on them which ensures me personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when my back is turned.

The Misses are very kind to me, but they have lately displeased me much, and in this way: -Now I am coming the Richardson! — On my return, the first day I called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a cousin of theirs, who, having fallen out with her grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. to take asylum

in her house. She is an East Indian,' and ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I called, Mrs. was in conference with her upstairs, and the young ladies were warm in her praise downstairs, cailing her genteel, interesting, and a thousand other pretty things, to which I gave no heed, not being partial to nine days' wonders. Now all is completely changed: they hate her, and from what I hear she is not without faults of a real kind; but she has others, which are more apt to make

I This was not intended as a description of Fanny Brawne, as supposed by all

of Keats's biographers. Fanny Brawne was not an East Indian.

women of inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is at least a Charmian: she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes into the room she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may address her; from habit, she thinks that nothing particular. I always find myself more at ease with such a woman; the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time think I am in love with her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very "yes" and "no" of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her and her like, because one has no sensations: what we both are is taken for granted. You will suppose I have, by this, had much talk with herno such thing; there are the Misses on the lookout. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt to me— what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn towards her with a magnetic power. This they call flirting! They do not know things; they do not VOL. I.

6

know what a woman is. I believe, though, she has faults, the same as Charmian or Cleopatra might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things-the worldly, theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual, and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, and this Charmian hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker, rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me.

"I am free from men of pleasure's cares,

By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs."

This is Lord Byron, and one of the finest things he has said.

I have no town talk for you; as for politics, they are in my opinion only sleepy because they will soon be wide awake. Perhaps not; for the longcontinued peace of England has given us notions of personal safety which are likely to prevent the reëstablishment of our national honesty. There is of a truth nothing manly or sterling in any part of the Government. There are many madmen in the country, I have no doubt, who would like to be beheaded on Tower Hill merely because of the sake of éclat; there are many men who like Hunt, from a principle of taste, would like to see things go on