Casa Guidi Windows, part i.]

[Footnote 166:  The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was made to popular aspirations.]

To Miss Mitford [Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark].

Ever dearest Miss Mitford,—­I am delighted to have your letter, and lose little time in replying to it.  The lost letter meanwhile does not appear.  The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if still one may say ‘summer’ now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest....  Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness.  His gardener’s daughter, for instance, is just a rose:  and ‘a Rose,’ one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely sensual as fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots.  Did you read Mrs. Butler’s ‘Year of Consolation,’ and how did you think of it in the main?  As to Mr. Home’s illustrations of national music, I don’t know; I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have done well—­men who couldn’t write ‘Orion’ and the ‘Death of Marlowe.’  Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him ‘tiresome’ if you like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught I know, of course; but you sha’n’t say that he has not done some fine things in poetry.  Now, you know what the first book of ‘Orion’ is, and ‘Marlowe,’ and ‘Cosmo;’ and you sha’n’t say that you don’t know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind you....  It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st.  We stay, however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through reason.  Which is strongest, who knows?  We quite love Florence, and have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence.  So I suppose we shall stay.  In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of public sympathy and overflowing the city.  The procession passed under our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the thanks of his people.  The joy and exultation on all sides were most affecting to look upon.  Grave men kissed one another, and grateful young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles, and the children themselves mixed their shrill little vivas with the shouts of the people.  At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more innocent manifestation