Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 22d Aug. 1852.
Thinking of you this morning—as I often do, though you may not suppose so—it was "borne in on my mind" that I must write to you, and I obey the inspiration without waiting to consider whether there may be a corresponding desire on your part to hear from me. I live in a world of cares and joys so remote from the one in which we used to sympathize with each other that I find positive communication with you difficult. But I am not unfaithful to old loves—they were sincere, and they are lasting. I hope you will not think it too much trouble to write me a little news of yourself. I want very much to know if your health continues good, and if there has been any change in your circumstances, that I may have something like a true conception of you. All is well with me so far as my individuality is concerned, but I have plenty of friends' troubles to sorrow over. I hope you have none to add to the number.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Aug. 1852.
I celebrated my return to London by the usual observance—that is to say, a violent headache, which is not yet gone, and of course I am in the worst spirits, and my opinion of things is not worth a straw. I tell you this that you may know why I only send you this scrap instead of the long letter which I have in petto for you, and which would otherwise have been written yesterday.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Sept. 1852.
Somehow my letters—except those which come under the inexorable imperative must (the "ought" I manage well enough to shirk)—will not get written. The fact is, I am in a croaking mood, and I am waiting and waiting for it to pass by, so if my pen croaks in spite of my resolutions to the contrary, please to take no notice of it. Ever since I came back I have felt something like the madness which imagines that the four walls are contracting and going to crush one. Harriet Martineau (in a private letter shown to me), with incomprehensible ignorance, jeers at Lewes for introducing psychology as a science in his Comte papers. Why, Comte himself holds psychology to be a necessary link in the chain of science. Lewes only suggests a change in its relations. There is a great, dreary article on the Colonies by my side, asking for reading and abridgment, so I cannot go on scribbling—indeed, my hands are so hot and tremulous this morning that it will be better for you if I leave off. Your little loving notes are very precious to me; but I say nothing about matters of feeling till my good genius has returned from his excursions; the evil one has possession just now.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 11th Sept. 1852.
The week has really yielded nothing worth telling you. I am a few degrees more wizened and muddle-headed; and the articles for the Review are, on the whole, unsatisfactory. I fear a discerning public will think this number a sad falling-off. This is the greater pity, that said public is patronizing us well at present. Scarcely a day passes that some one does not write to order the Review, as a permanent subscriber. You may as well expect news from an old spider or bat as from me. I can only tell you what I think of the "Blithedale Romance," of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the American Fishery Dispute—all which, I am very sure, you don't want to know. Do have pity on me, and make a little variety in my life, by all sending me a scrap—never mind if it be only six lines apiece. Perhaps something will befall me one day or other. As it is, nothing happens to me but the ringing of the dinner-bell and the arrival of a proof. I have no courage to walk out.
Letter to Charles Bray, 18th Sept. 1852.
Lewes called on me the other day and told me of a conversation with Professor Owen, in which the latter declared his conviction that the cerebrum was not the organ of the mind, but the cerebellum rather. He founds on the enormous comparative size of brain in the grampus! The professor has a huge anterior lobe of his own. What would George Combe say if I were to tell him? But every great man has his paradox, and that of the first anatomist in Europe ought to be a startling one.