Pretty Arabella Goddard we heard play at Berlin--play the very things you heard as a _bonne bouche_ at the last--none the less delightful from being so unlike the piano playing of Liszt and Clara Schumann, whom we had heard at Weimar--both great, and one the greatest.
Thank you for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labors, or live to go on working? Sometimes, when I read of the death of some great, sensitive human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and yet, along with that, such deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature is gone forever into darkness, and we can never know that our love and reverence can reach him, that I seem to have gone through a personal sorrow when I shut the book and go to bed. I felt in that way the other night when I finished the life of Scott aloud to Mr. Lewes. He had never read the book before, and has been deeply stirred by the picture of Scott's character, his energy and steady work, his grand fortitude under calamity, and the spirit of strict honor to which he sacrificed his declining life. He loves Scott as well as I do.
We have met a pleasant-faced, bright-glancing man, whom we set down to be worthy of the name, Richard Congreve. I am curious to see if our _Ahnung_ will be verified.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th Feb. 1859.]
One word of gratitude to _you_ first before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest, disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow. I need hardly tell you what I want, you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. I wish I were not an anxious, fidgety wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an _anxiety_ soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness--such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me. Since I wrote this, I have just had a letter from my sister Chrissey--ill in bed, consumptive--regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart.