’We were at Fano, and three times we went
  To sit and see him in his chapel there,
  And drink his beauty to our soul’s content
  My angel with me too.’]

[Footnote 181:  The first two volumes of Modern Painters bore no author’s name, but were described as being ‘by a graduate of Oxford.’  At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin’s acquaintance, as some subsequent letters testify.]

To Miss Mitford Florence:  October 10, 1848.

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,—­Have you not thought some hard thoughts of me, for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest?  Do I not love you truly?  Yes, indeed.  But while preparing to write to you my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat.  I had not the heart to write a line to anyone, much less to prepare a packet to escort your letter free from foreign postage; and to make you pay for a chapter of Lamentations’ without the spirit of prophecy, would have been too hard on you, wouldn’t it?  Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had by them, and then he wouldn’t see a physician; and if it hadn’t been that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and Father Prout of ‘Fraser,’ knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant, who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying, ’O Inglesi, Inglesi!’ the case would have been far worse, I have no kind of doubt.  For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew quieter directly.  I shall always be grateful to Father Prout, always.  The very sight of some one with a friend’s name and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a ‘bambina’ and frightened without cause, were as comforting as the salutation of angels.  Also, he has been in Florence ever since, and we have seen him every day; he came to doctor and remained to talk.  A very singular person, of whom the world tells a thousand and one tales, you know, but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing towards us.  Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennent’s, and since has crossed paths with him on various points of Europe.  The first time I saw him was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation in Italy.  Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with learned associations and vivid combinations of fancy and experience—­having seen all the ends of the earth and the men thereof,