1 838-39- UNSATISFACTORINESS OF LETTERS. 75 



the fleets of Bonaparte and Nelson, which crossed each 

 other in the dark seas some half dozen times and did not 

 know it, come athwart each other, and pass on to spread 

 false intelligence among us. A great pile of unanswered 

 questions weigh down my faculties, and would rub the nib 

 off my pen if I tried to reply to them. Think not that you 

 know anything about us here. Publish nothing that reaches 

 you. Be very wary of reflecting on the ideas you gather from 

 my letters. The very moment after I send a letter to you, 

 something arises to alter the truth of what I have written ; 

 and the next morning a letter comes from yourself, which 

 by half anticipating, yet in a different way, what I had been 

 writing about to you, tumbles me down from the height of 

 satisfaction, where I had been regaling myself with the idea 

 that I had cleared scores with Daniel. And yet the cross- 

 ing of letters (not ladies' crossing, which I love not) some- 

 times effects good, as in the present case ; for when I wrote 

 the last letter, I had abandoned the idea of going to Bir- 

 mingham. But your most kind, welcome, very delightful 

 letter urging it on me, and reminding me of what, in the un- 

 geographical cast of my brain, I had absolutely forgotten 

 the nearness of Birmingham to London, has set me a thinking 

 again on the matter, and I think I shall be able to accom- 

 plish it. Although my plans are still green and immature, 

 I write that the damping of your thoughts on seeing me, 

 which my last letter may have occasioned, may be effaced 

 by the shadow at least of a hope. I shall not stay long in 

 Birmingham ; probably come away before the end of the 

 time. Samuel Brown will go up with me (if I go ; if I don't, 

 he says he will not either), and he'll go on to London too ; 

 so that, if things work well, we'll give you enough of our 

 poor presence. 



" If I had been brought up at the desk in the 'Dr. Sir' 



