I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared
from a shell--over which nobody had prognosticated good--on August
16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally delighted, and we
all three, in the capacity of good sitters and indefatigable
pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves....

Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master--and you can't
think how much effect and expression she has given to several of her
own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is
without a piano, and is not to have one again _until we have another
house_! This is something like 'when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.'
_Speaking of Homer and Virgil_, I have been writing a 'Romance of the
Ganges,'[34] in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual
to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden's tableaux for 1838. It does not
sound a _very_ Homeric undertaking--I confess I don't hold any kind of
annual, gild it as you please, in too much honour and awe--but from
my wish to please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a
certain time, I was 'quite frightful,' as poor old Cooke used to
say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite
pleased--she is very soon pleased--and the ballad, gone the way of
all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some
kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except
all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads
German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of
us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write
any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how
deeply and unchangeably I must regard you--both with my _mind_, my
_affections_, and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.

Henrietta's kindest love and thanks for your letter. She desires me