Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and _shall_) thank Miss Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social barbarians, to my mind--that is, we know how to read and write and think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And _that_ I can see in the books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some accounts. Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the _scores_ a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and I know. Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the _good_ sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise? _That_, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words. Ever affectionately yours, E.B.B. [Footnote 36: John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son of a wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite a boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the second quarter of the century. He published some volumes of minor verse, but is best known for his friendships with many literary men and women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with whom he was brought into contact. Crabb Robinson described him as a man 'whose life is spent in making people happy.' He was a distant cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated to him his volume of 'Dramatic Romances,' besides writing and sending to him 'Andrea del Sarto' as a substitute for a print of the painter's portrait which he had been unable to find. The best account of Kenyon is to be found in Mrs. Crosse's 'John Kenyon and his Friends' (in _Red-Letter Days of My Life_, vol. i.).] _To John Kenyon_ Wimpole Street: Sunday evening [1838?]. My dear Mr. Kenyon,--I am _so_ sorry to hear of your going, and I not able to say 'good-bye' to you, that--I am _not_ writing this note on that account.