London: September 24, 1851.

My dear Miss Haworth,--I do hope you have not set us quite on the
outside of your heart with the unfeeling and ungrateful. I say 'us' when
I ought to have said 'me,' for you have known Robert, and you have not
known _me_, and I am naturally less safe with you than he is--less safe
in your esteem. We should both have gone to inquire after your health if
he had not been attacked with influenza, and unfit for anything until
the days you mentioned as the probable term of your remaining in town
had passed. I waited till he should be better, and the malady lingered.
Now he is well, and I do hope you may be so too. May it be! Bear us in
mind and love, for we go away to-morrow to Paris--where, however, we
shall _expect_ you before long. Thank you, thank you, for the books. I
have been struck and charmed with some things in the
'Companion'--especially, may I say, with the 'Modern Pygmalion,' which
catches me on my weak side of the _love of wonder_. By the way, what am
I to say of Swedenborg and mesmerism? So much I could--the books have so
drawn and held me (as far as I was capable of being drawn or held, in
this chaos of London)--that I will not speak at all. The note-page is
too small--the haste I write in, too great.

God bless you, and good bye. Robert bids me give you his love (of the
earnestest), and I have leave from you (have I not?) to be always
affectionately yours,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.