I am just about to set out on a purchasing expedition to Coventry: you may therefore conceive that I am full of little plans and anxieties, and will understand why I should be brief. I hope by the close of next week that we and our effects shall be deposited at Foleshill, and until then and afterwards I shall be fully occupied, so that I am sure you will not expect to hear from me for the next six weeks. One little bit of unreasonableness you must grant me--the request for a letter from yourself within that time.
Letters to Miss Lewis--First visit to London--Religious asceticism--Pascal--Hannah More's letters--Young's "Infidel Reclaimed"--Michaelmas visitors--"Life of Wilberforce"--Nineteenth birthday--Oratorio at Coventry--Religious objections to music--Letters to Mrs. Samuel Evans--Religious reflections--Besetting sin ambition--Letters to Miss Lewis--Objections to fiction-reading--Religious contentions on the nature of the visible Church--First poem--Account of books read and studies pursued--Wordsworth--Twentieth birthday--German begun--Plan of Chart of Ecclesiastical History--Religious controversies--Oxford Tracts--"Lyra Apostolica"--"Christian Year"--Chart of Ecclesiastical History forestalled--Italian begun--Trip to Derbyshire and Staffordshire--"Don Quixote"--Spenser's "Faery Queen"--Mrs. Somerville's "Connection of the Physical Sciences"--Dislike of housekeeping work--Removal to Coventry decided--"Ancient Christianity and the Oxford Tracts," by Isaac Taylor, and Mrs. John Cash's impression of its effect--Determination not to feed on the broth of literature--Visit to Birmingham to hear the "Messiah"--Reading Schiller's "Maria Stuart," and Tasso--Translation of German poem--Depression of surroundings at Griff--Reading Harris's "Great Teacher," Aimé Martin's "L'Education des Mères," and Mrs. Hemans's Poems--Selling furniture at new house--Sewing--Reading "Life and Times of Louis XIV."--Removal to Foleshill road, Coventry.
[9] Given to her as a school prize when she was fourteen.
[10] "Mill on the Floss," chap. v. book vi.
[13] When she would be thirteen years old.
[14] Written probably in view of her brother's marriage.
[15] Visit to Miss Rawlins, her brother's _fiancée_.