_To John Kenyon_[36]
[1838.]

Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and _shall_) thank Miss
Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian
glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees
nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social
barbarians, to my mind--that is, we know how to read and write and
think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our
noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so
much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life
has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And _that_ I can see in the
books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living
in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some
accounts.

Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but
the recollection of the _scores_ a little ghastly for the occasion,
perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs
of Bacchus, as the god and I know.

Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so
selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the
_good_ sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of
their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I
said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise?
_That_, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.