If you have seen Sir David Brewster lately I should like to know whether he has had more experience concerning the tables, and has modified his conclusions in any respect. I myself am convinced as I can be of any fact, that there is an external intelligence; the little I have seen is conclusive to me. And this makes me more anxious that the subject should be examined with common fairness by learned persons. Only the learned won't learn—that's the worst of them. Their hands are too full to gather simples. It seems to me a new development of law in the human constitution, which has worked before in exceptional cases, but now works in general.
Dearest friend, I do not speak of your own anxious watch and tender grief, but think of them deeply. Believe that I love you always and in all truth.
Your
E.B.B.
[Rome:] 43 Bocca di Leone: December 27, [1853].
My dearest Fanny,—I can't judge of your 'obstacles,' of course, but as to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome and Cività (Castellana or Vecchia), there's certainly not room for even a dream of it. There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came, except for exacting invalids. I, for instance, have been kept in the house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas Day, when I was able to get to St. Peter's) by tramontana; but there has been sun on most days of cold, and nothing has been severe as cold. The hard weather came in November, before we arrived. I was out yesterday, and may be to-day, perhaps. 'Judge ye!'...
You bid me write. But to what end, if you are here on New Year's Day? There's not time for a letter.
And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as you are not actually of the race of Medes and Persians, you might possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines. Oh, a provoking person or persons you are, since you and Ellen Heaton are plural henceforth! No, I won't include her. You are singular, by your own confession, on this occasion. And, instead of Christmas solemnisations, I shall take to reading the Commination Service over you if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable, snowed-up roads around Rome. You really might as well object to coming on account of the heat!...