To Dr. John Brown

Denmark Hill, 9th February [1848].

My Dear Dr. Brown,—I owe you my best thanks for your most interesting review; it is delightful as a memoir of such a man, and equally so as a piece of very beautiful thought, and very perfect writing. I do not recollect anything that has given me greater pleasure than the account of the Doctor's Sisyphian labours and ratiocinations on the Pentlands, or than the very beautiful comparison of Genius, talent, and information with the three several streams; but it is all valuable. The worst of it was, that after all that we hear of your noble old friend's Thunder and Lightning, one is—at least I was—a little disappointed by the quietness and sobriety of the extracts from the Scripture readings. Is it at all possible to get a Calotype of him? I suppose it must be now. There is certainly nothing like them for rendering of Intellect, nor to my taste for everything else, except beauty.

I liked the passage very much about self-forgetfulness, but how is this virtue to be gained? Happy those whose sympathies stretch them out like gold leaf until their very substance is lost. But there are others—not unprincipled men—who yet cannot make themselves to themselves transparent nor imponderable. They overbalance and block out everything with their own near selves.…

To Mary Russell Mitford

Keswick, Cumberland, Good Friday [April 21], 1848.

My Dear Miss Mitford,—The pain of deep self-reproach was mixed with the delight which your letter gave me yesterday.