expression a few days since, touched me so nearly and deeply. Without it I should have written when I was able—I mean physically able—for in the exhaustion consequent upon fever, I have been too weak to hold a pen. As to reluctancy of feeling, believe me that I must change more than illness or grief can change me, before it becomes a painful effort to communicate with one so very kind as you have been to me. . . . Besides the appreciated sympathy, I have to acknowledge four proofs of your remembrance, the seals of which lay unbroken for a fortnight or more after their removal here. . . . You have been in the fields—I know by the flowers—and found there, I suppose, between the flowers and the life and dear Mrs. Orme, that pleasant dream (for me!) about my going to London at Easter. I never dreamt it. And while you wrote, what a mournful contrary was going on here! It was a heavy blow (may God keep you from such!). I knew you would be sorry for me when you heard.
A few days later she resumed her correspondence with Horne, chiefly with respect to his fine drama of Gregory the Seventh, to which was prefixed an "Essay on Tragic Influence":—
I have read but little lately, and not at all until very lately; but two or three days ago papa held up Gregory before my eyes as something sure to bring pleasure into them. "Ah! I knew that would move you." After all, I have scarcely been long enough face to face with him to apprehend the full grandeur of his countenance. There are very grand things, and expounded in your characteristic massiveness of diction. But it does so far appear to me that for the tragic heights, and for that passionate singleness of purpose in which you surpass the poets of our time, we shall revert to Cosmo and Marlowe. Well, it may be very wrong—I must think over my thoughts. And at any rate the "Essay on Tragic Influence" is full of noble philosophy and poetry—perhaps the highest—and absolutely independent, in its own essence, of stages; which involve, to my mind, little more than its translation into a grosser form, in order to its apprehension by the vulgar. What Macready can touch Lear? In brief, if the union between tragedy and the gaslights be less incongruous and absurd than the union between Church and State, is it less desecrative of the Divine theory? In the clashing of my No against your Yes, I must write good-bye.
Soon afterwards Miss Barrett commenced a series of most interesting letters to Horne in connection with
