MY VERY DEAR MARY, Your note was a sad blow to me; but perhaps it is best that we should so have parted, and I am very thankful that we should have had this week together. I am thankful for many things--that we love each other so entirely; that you have a husband who has been so invariably kind to all of us, and whom I can love in return; and then, that your girls seem to me like real friends, and almost like my own children. All these are great goods and absence cannot touch them. God bless you, my darling Sister. Your ever affectionate E. EDEN. _Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._ CARTON, _September 1, 1835._ I fear there is no good sketcher in Dublin, but there is a man who does paint something like a miniature, and does catch a likeness, and it shall be done for you next week, my darling. I never have you out of my mind a minute, and I always thought I should not be sorry if a change sent a Tory out instead of you.... I feel cheerful about you because you are doing what is right, and only think what you would have been suffering now if you were seeing him prepared to go without you.... Shall we take good in this world and not take the evil, _our old compensations_? You might have lived years without either you or George knowing how much you loved each other, and is there not an utter delight in this feeling of devotion twice blessed? Let me know how I am to write to you, and how to send my letters. How little did I imagine when I read of India, and looked on those hot, misty, gorgeous Indian views, that I should ever garner up part of my heart there. I am staying here.[429] I always like them, but there is a want of colour and life and impulse. There are many positive virtues present, and an absence of all vice and evil, but yet something is wanted. There is the dreaminess of Sleepy Hollow upon them. Send me a bit of your hair, my darling, and always bear me in your “heart of hearts, as I do thee, Horatio.” I cannot believe it yet, nor do you, dearest, in spite of the preparations, and it is best you should not believe it till it is over.... It must be done, and so it had best be well done! and I will not hang to your skirts and make it harder for you to go forward and do right, only I felt all the love I have borne you for all these years choking me till I sobbed it well out, you whom I loved as my own sister.... I was not surprised at it; I felt it would be, it was so like life--such a horrid piece of good fortune, such a painful bit of right to be done. How right the Wise Men were to come _from_ the East! Only, I should not have been particular about going back again; I had rather have stayed and sat in Herod’s back-parlour for the rest of my life.