EMBLEY, _October_ 13 [1847]. DEAREST FRIEND--To think that you are now a two months' wife, and I have never written to tell you that your piece of news gave me more joy than I ever felt in all my life, except once, no, not even excepting that once, because _that_ was a game of Blind-man's-Buff,--and in _your_ case you knew even as you were known. I had the news on a Sunday from dear Ju, and it was indeed a Sunday joy and I kept it holy, though not like the city, which was to be in cotton to be looked at _only_ on Sundays. As has often been said, we must all take Sappho's leap, one way or other, before we attain to her repose--though some take it to death, and some to marriage, and some again to a new life even in this world.
Which of them to the better part, God only knows. Popular prejudice gives it in favour of marriage. Should we not look upon marriage, less as an absolute blessing, than as a remove into another and higher class of this great school-room--a promotion--for it is a promotion, which creates new duties, before which the coward sometimes shrinks, and gives new lessons, of more advanced knowledge, with more advanced powers to meet them, and a much clearer power of vision to read them. In your new development of life, I take, dearest friend, a right fervent interest, and bless you with a right heartfelt and earnest love.
We are only just returned to Embley, after having passed through London, on our way from Derbyshire. News have I none, excepting financial, for no one could talk of anything in London excepting the horrid quantity of failures in the City, by which all England has suffered more or less. Why didn't I write before? Because I thought you would rather be let alone at first and that you were on your travels.
And now for my confessions. I utterly abjure, I entirely renounce and abhor, all that I may have said about M. Robert Mohl, not because he is now your brother-in-law, but because I was so moved and touched by the letters which he wrote after your marriage to Mama; so anxious they were to know more about you, so absorbed in the subject, so eager to prove to us that his brother was _such_ a man, he was quite sure to make you happy.
And I have not said half enough either upon that score, not anything that I feel; how "to marry" is no impersonal verb, upon which I am to congratulate you, but depends entirely upon the Accusative Case which it governs, upon which I do wish you heartfelt and trusting joy. In single life the stage of the Present and the Outward World is so filled with phantoms, the phantoms, not unreal tho' intangible, of Vague Remorse, Tears, dwelling on the threshold of every thing we undertake alone, Dissatisfaction with what is, and Restless Yearnings for what is not, cravings after a world of wonders (which _is_, but is like the chariot and horses of fire, which Elisha's frightened servant could not see, till his eyes were opened)--the stage of actual life gets so filled with these that we are almost pushed off the boards and are conscious of only just holding on to the foot lights by our chins, yet even in that very inconvenient position love still precedes joy, as in St. Paul's list, for love laying to sleep these phantoms (by assuring us of a love so great that we may lay aside all care for our own happiness, not because it is of _no_ consequence to us, whether we are happy or not, as Carlyle says, but because it is of so much consequence to another) gives that leisure frame to our mind, which opens it at once to joy.