Haworth_ 126 Via Felice, Rome: Saturday, [about January 1861].
Ah, dearest Fanny, I can't rest without telling you that I am sorry at your receiving such an impression from my letter.

May God save me from such a sin as arrogance! I have not generally a temptation to it, through knowing too well what I am myself.

At the same time, I do not dispute my belief in what you have so often confessed, that you don't hold your attainments and opinions sufficiently 'irrespectively of persons.' Believing which of you, I said, 'under what new influence ?' and if I said anything with too much vivacity, forgive me with that sweetness of nature which is at least as characteristic of you as the intellectual impressionability.

Really I would not wound you for the world--but I myself perhaps may have been over-excitable, irritable just then, who knows?
and, in fact, I _was_ considerably vexed at the moment that, from anything said by me, you would infer what was so injurious and unjust to a woman like Mrs.Stowe.I named her in this relation because she struck me as a remarkable example of the compatibility of freedom of thought with reverence of sentiment.

You generally get one or the other; the one excluding the other.