so, and that you come to London to be ill and leave it before you can be well again.  It is a comfort in every case to know of your being better, and Hastings is warm and quiet, and the pretty country all round (mind you go and see the ‘Rocks’ par excellence)! will entice you into very gentle exercise.  At the same time, don’t wish me into the house you speak of.  I can lose nothing here, shut up in my prison, and the nightingales come to my windows and sing through the sooty panes.  If I were at Hastings I should risk the chance of recovering liberty, and the consolations of slavery would not reach me as they do here.  Also, if I were to set my heart upon Hastings, I might break it at leisure; there would be exactly as much difficulty in turning my face that way as towards Italy—­ah, you do not understand!  And I do, at last, I am sorry to say; and it has been very long, tedious and reluctant work, the learning of the lesson....

Did Henrietta tell you that I heard at last from Miss Martineau, who thought me in Italy, she said, and therefore was silent?  She has sent me her new work (have you read it?) and speaks of her strength and of being able to walk fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy tale, or the ‘Three-leagued Boots’ at least.

What am I doing, to tell you of?  Nothing!  The winter is kind, and this divine ‘muggy’ weather (is that the technical word and spelling thereof?), which gives all reasonable people colds in their heads, leaves me the hope of getting back to the summer without much injury.  A friend of mine—­one of the greatest poets in England too—­brought me primroses and polyanthuses the other day, as they are grown in Surrey![140] Surely it must be nearer spring than we think.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, write and say how you are.  And say, God bless you, both the yous, and mention Mr. Martin particularly, and what your plans are.

Ever your affectionate
BA.

[Footnote 140: 

  Beloved, them hast brought me many flowers
  Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,
  And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
  In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, xliv.]

To Mrs. Martin Tuesday [end of June 1846].

So, my dearest Mrs. Martin, you are quite angry with all of us and with me chiefly.  Oh, you need not say no!  I see it, I understand it, and shall therefore take up my own cause precisely as if I were an injured person.  In the first place, dearest Mrs. Martin, when you wrote to me (at last!) to say that we were both guilty correspondents, you should have spoken in the singular number; for I was not guilty at all, I beg to say, while you were on the Continent.  You were uncertain, you said, on going, where you should go and how long you should stay, and you promised to write and give me some sort of address—­a promise never kept—­and where was I to write