My return to Boulge is delayed for another week, because we expect my
Father here just now. But for this, I should have been on the Union
Coach this day. The children here are most delightful; the best company
in all the world, to my mind. If you could see the little girl dance the
Polka with her sisters! Not set up like an Infant Terpsichore, but
seriously inclined, with perfect steps in perfect time.
We see a fine white frost over the grass this morning; and I suppose you
have rubbed your hands and cried 'Oh Lauk, how cold it is!' twenty times
before I write this. Now one's pictures become doubly delightful to one.
I certainly love winter better than summer. Could one but know, as one
sits within the tropic latitude of one's fireside, that there was not
increased want, cold, and misery, beyond it!
My Spectator tells me that Leigh Hunt has published a good volume of Poem-
selections; not his own poems, but of others. And Miss Martineau has
been cured of an illness of five years standing by Mesmerism! By the
help of a few passes of the hand following an earnest Will, she, who had
not set foot out of her room, for the chief part of those five years, now
can tread the grass again, and walk five miles! Her account of the
business in the Athenaeum is extremely interesting. She is the only one
I have read of who describes the sensations of _the trance_, which,
seeming a painful one to the wide-awake looker on, is in fact a state of
tranquil glorification to the patient. It cheers but not inebriates! She
felt her disease oozing away out at her feet, and as it were streams of
warm fresh vitality coming in its place. And when she woke, lo, this was
no dream!
_To F. Tennyson_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Decr_. 8/44.