in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should
have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to
say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in
boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I
have written a great deal of nonsense--'Je m'en doute.'

Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and
was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant
air which I always fancy people 'just from the country' put on towards
us hapless Londoners.

But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day
long at being in London. _There are many advantages here_, as I say to
myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see
even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at
the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real
live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and
sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and
Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books,
has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London
at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away....

Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry,
before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last
of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a
dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love
poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did.
Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I
read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little
faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which