I should like always to be able to know myself
from somebody else.
I _do_ read the papers sometimes, dear H----, and, whenever I do, I
wonder at you and all sensible people who make a daily practice of
it; the proceedings of Parliament would make one angry if they did
not make one so sad, and some of the debates would seem to me
laughable but that I know they are lamentable.
I have just finished Channing's essay on Milton, which is
admirable.
My cousin Harry sails for India on Thursday; his mother is making a
brave fight of it, poor soul! I met them all at my aunt Siddons's
last night; she was remarkably well, and "charming," as she styles
herself when that is the case. Good-by. Always affectionately
yours,
FANNY.
I suppose it is one of the peculiarities of the real poetical
temperament to receive, as it were, a double impression of its own
phenomena--one through the senses, affections, and passions, and one
through the imagination--and to have a perpetual tendency to make
intellectual capital of the experiences of its own sensuous,
sentimental, and passionate nature.
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