"The box of books came last night, and, as usual, I have only gratefully to admire the selection made: 'Jeffrey's Essays,' 'Dr. Arnold's Life,' 'The Roman,' 'Alton Loche,' these were all wished for and welcome. "You say I keep no books; pardon me--I am ashamed of my own rapaciousness I have kept 'Macaulay's History,' and Wordsworth's 'Prelude', and Taylor's 'Philip Van Artevelde.' I soothe my conscience by saying that the two last,--being poetry--do not count. This is a convenient doctrine for me I meditate acting upon it with reference to the Roman, so I trust nobody in Cornhill will dispute its validity or affirm that 'poetry' has a value, except for trunk-makers. "I have already had 'Macaulay's Essays,' 'Sidney Smith's Lectures on Moral Philosophy,' and 'Knox on Race.' Pickering's work on the same subject I have not seen; nor all the volumes of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. However, I am now abundantly supplied for a long time to come. I liked Hazlitt's Essays much. "The autumn, as you say, has been very fine. I and solitude and memory have often profited by its sunshine on the moors. "I had felt some disappointment at the non-arrival of the proof-sheets of 'Wuthering Heights;' a feverish impatience to complete the revision is apt to beset me. The work of looking over papers, etc., could not be gone through with impunity, and with unaltered spirits; associations too tender, regrets too bitter, sprang out of it. Meantime, the Cornhill books now, as heretofore, are my best medicine,--affording a solace which could not be yielded by the very same books procured from a common library. "Already I have read the greatest part of the 'Roman;' passages in it possess a kindling virtue such as true poetry alone can boast; there are images of genuine grandeur; there are lines that at once stamp themselves on the memory. Can it be true that a new planet has risen on the heaven, whence all stars seemed fast fading? I believe it is; for this Sydney or Dobell speaks with a voice of his own, unborrowed, unmimicked. You hear Tennyson, indeed, sometimes, and Byron sometimes, in some passages of the Roman; but then again you have a new note,--nowhere clearer than in a certain brief lyric, sang in a meeting of minstrels, a sort of dirge over a dead brother;--THAT not only charmed the ear and brain, it soothed the heart." The following extract will be read with interest as conveying her thoughts after the perusal of Dr. Arnold's Life:-- "Nov. 6th.