Autograph letter signed : Ventnor, to Lord Monteagle, [1852] December 13.

Reflecting at length on the death of William Empson and the nature of death and loss; confessing to him "The death of those I love no longer afflicts me as it did. Is it that my heart is grown hard, or any sensibility blunt? I think not - on the contrary - My thoughts are ever employed about them & in the tenderest [illegible]. But death has been so busy among my friends - even the young - that I seem as if I were looking on some procession where one after another is lost to sight - and that this is natural & ought to cause no shock or surprise - only a tender regret, as for a short parting;" commenting on her friendship with Empson saying "He was a friend, rare in all cases - rarest of all, when the object of the friendship is young & a woman. Often in [illegible] I have boasted of this as one of the great glories of England - that we women could have friends (not des amis) and always I thought of Empson, or quoted him as one to whom a young woman might give the most confiding affectionate friendship with entire trust & safety;" discussing her "sentence of banishment for the winter" and the consumption that surrounds her there; discussing mutual friends and Empson's widow; expressing her gratitude to him for their friendship.