of their childhood—green as grass—as that love of stories."
Oh, that love for story-telling! It may be foolish, to be sure; it leads one into waste of time and strong excitements, to be sure; still, how pleasant it is! How full of enchantment and dream-time gladnesses! What a pleasant accompaniment to one's lonely coffee-cup in the morning or evening, to hold a little volume in the left hand and read softly along how Lindoro saw Monimia over the hedge, and what he said to her! After breakfast we have other matters to do—grave "business matters," poems to write upon Eden, or essays on Carlyle, or literature in various shapes to be employed seriously on. But everybody must attend to a certain proportion of practical affairs of life, and Lindoro and Monimia bring us ours. And then, if Monimia behaves pretty well, what rational satisfaction we have in settling her at the end of the book. No woman who speculates and practises "on her own account" has half the satisfaction in securing an establishment that we have with our Monimias, nor should have, let it be said boldly. Did we not divine it would end so—albeit, ourselves and Monimia were weeping together at the end of the second volume? Even to the middle of the third, when Lindoro was sworn at for a traitor by everybody in the book, may it not be testified gloriously of us that we saw through him, and relied implicitly upon an exculpating fidelity which should be "in" at the finis, to glorify him finally? What, have you known nothing, Mr. Editor, of these exaltations? Indeed your note looks like it.
The correspondence with Horne, in respect to matters connected with the New Spirit, ran on into the new year. One note in January contained some very appropriate and truthful words on Byron, one of Elizabeth Barrett's childish idols, to whom, with her usual unswerving tenacity, she held true in her maturity. "Horne!" she exclaims, "do you, too, call Byron vindictive? I do not. If he turned upon the dart, it was by the instinct of passion, not by the theory of vengeance, I believe and am assured. Poor, poor Lord Byron! Now would I lay the sun and moon against a tennis-ball that he had more tenderness in one section of his heart than * * * * has in all hers, though a
