Don't expect us, nevertheless.

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you may hold a Field in
your right hand, and a Baskerville in your left, before the year is
out! That degree of happiness will satisfy at least the _bodily_ part
of you.

You may wish, in return, for _me_, that I may learn to write rather
more legibly than 'at these presents.'

Our love to Annie.

Won't you send your new poem to Mr. Barker, to the care of Mr. Valpy,
with your Christmas benedictions?

[Footnote 31: As a matter of fact, 'The Seraphim' was not printed in
the _New Monthly_, being probably thought too long.]


_To Mrs. Martin_.
[74 Gloucester Place:] January 23, 1837 [postmark].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am standing in Henrietta's place, she
says--but not, _I_ say, to answer your letter to _her_ yesterday, but
your letter to _me_, some weeks ago--which I meant to answer much
more immediately if the _ignis fatuus_ of a house (you see to what
a miserable fatuity I am reduced, of applying your pure country