To Miss Mitford Florence:  December 8, 1847.

Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing?  When your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows.  Also I heard of you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and that made me lazier still.  Now don’t treat me according to the Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving you.  Think what we have done since I wrote last to you.  Taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract.  You will set it down as excellent poet’s work in the way of domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth.  The consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there.  You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy.  Oh, he isn’t a mere ‘round O’ in the air in this Italy, I assure you!  He makes us feel that he rules the day to all intents and purposes.  So away we came into the blaze of him here in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke’s palace, I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach.  Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to his being angry with me for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first.  So here we are on the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening; and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from the actual winter.  Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels, to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when, day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes and the glory thereof.  They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere.  The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the children would tire sooner than the Tuscans.  Robert said musingly the other morning as we stood at the window, ’Surely, after all this, they would use those muskets.’  It’s a problem, a ‘grand peut-etre.’  I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing.