From Emma Darwin to Fanny Allen 8 February [1869]

My dear Aunt Fanny—

You were quite right in telling me I sh^d like Bunsen if I persevered. What an angelic nature he had & how lucky he was to have a wife quite as high & spiritually minded as himself & his sons & daughters seem all to have been made of the same stuff. It is consoling to read such a intensely happy life as his was from beginning to end. I believe it was his character & not his talents which made him so looked up to. I cannot see any talent in his letters & when he talks of his own views & aims he is so hazy & unclear that I have never been able to fathom what his particular aim & study was. I shall be quite sorry to finish the book & it does one good to enter into such a mind. I want to know something about his daughter Emilia's cure— I thought she was prayed for & cured that way by a German Princess, but he speaks as if it was owing to mesmerism from a Count Somebody. Eliz. letters are comfortable about Edmund as the Dr there pronounces that there is no mischief now in the lungs tho' there seems to have been some slight mischief formerly. She is not charmed with Cannes, as too bustling. She & Isabella had had a charming wander up the mountains sitting down & enjoying the views. Isabella p^d for it by a sick headache. I feel very uneasy about poor Carry & rather so about Jessie & I am glad they are coming up for good advice.

We have had a nice visit from the Lyells. Lady L. at last looks her age but is just as young & springy in her mind as ever. Her innocent adoration of her nephew, repeating his sayings as if he was