My very dear Friend,--I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to say I am going to London. I may say so now--as far as the human may say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains uncertain--_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must. I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family. Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank God I am going home at last. How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough. Well--we do not know what _may_ happen! I _may_ (even that is probable) read to you again. But now--ah, my dear friend--if you could imagine me such as I am!--you would not think I could visit you! Yet I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than anything--I know it will! And if it does not, it will be _well_ even so. I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last week, where I have a 'House of Clouds,'[57] which papa likes so much that he would wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock in one room--that's another objection. How are your clocks? Do they go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do? I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and mine. I wish I heard of you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you! Your ever affectionate friend, E.B.B. _To H.S. Boyd_ August 31, 1831 [_sic_].