a green summer in her yet.  The winters you will excuse us, will you not?  People who are, like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses.  I am wonderfully well, and far better and stronger than before what you call the Pisan ‘crisis.’  Robert declares that nobody would know me, I look so much better.  And you heard from dearest Henrietta.  Ah, both of my dearest sisters have been perfect to me.  No words can express my feelings towards their goodness.  Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of my father’s excellent health and spirits, which is better even than to hear of his loving and missing me.  I had a few kind lines yesterday from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland.  She wants to talk to me, she says, of ‘her beloved Jordan.’  She is looking forward to a winter of work by the lakes, and to a summer of gardening.  The kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who makes us very happy by what he says of our marriage.  Shakespeare’s favorite air of the ‘Light of Love,’ with the full evidence of its being Shakespeare’s favorite air, is given in Charles Knight’s edition.  Seek for it there.  Now do write to me and at length, and tell me everything of yourself.  Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened out of his wits by the pine forests.  Flush likes civilised life, and the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence abounds with.  Unhappily it abounds also with fleas, which afflict poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair.  Fancy Robert and me down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side!  He suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it.  He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation.  Do you know of a remedy?  Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence.  Put via France.  Let me hear, do; and everything of yourself, mind.  Is Mrs. Partridge in better spirits?  Do you read any new French books?  Dearest friend, let me offer you my husband’s cordial regards, with the love of your own affectionate

E.B.B., BA.

[Footnote 163:  Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.]

[Footnote 164:  Tennyson’s Princess had just been published.]

To Mr. Westwood Florence:  September 1847.

Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen ‘friars.’  We have been on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, and while my husband rode up and down the precipitous mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged in a hamper by two white bullocks—­and such scenery; such hilly peaks, such black ravines and gurgling waters, and rocks and forests above and below, and at last such a monastery and such friars, who wouldn’t let us stay with them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the fraternity.  The monks had a new abbot, a St. Sejanus of a holy man, and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was classed with the temptations of St. Anthony.  So we had