ashamed to write at all.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to write to _you_. Indeed
I have meant to do it very, very often. Don't be severe upon me. I am
always afraid of writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault
is apt to be run into--of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a _fault_.
You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster developed.

Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading
the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon
Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows
but what I may die a glorious death under the _pons asinorum_ after
all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that
matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of
matter--the ultimate molecules--are a kind of _tertium quid_ between
matter and spirit. Certainly I can't believe that any kind of matter,
primal or ultimate, can be _indivisible_, which it must according to
his view.

Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to
matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to
do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade--'no tree on which a
fine bird did not sit.' ...

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B.B.


_To H.S. Boyd_
Sidmouth: September 14, [1834].