For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the truth—­as partial truth:—­I was speaking generally quite.  Admit that I am not apt to be extravagant in my esprit de sexe:  the Martineau doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember, like a woman—­most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me.  But we are not on that ground now—­we are on ground worth holding a brief for!—­and when women fail here ... it is not so much our fault.  Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.

It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your ‘Luria,’ this third act, of the worth of a woman’s sympathy,—­indeed of the exquisite double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies.  Nothing could be better, I think, than this:—­

    To the motive, the endeavour,—­the heart’s self—­
    Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
    The soul of the purpose ere ’tis shaped as act,
    Takes flesh i’ the world, and clothes itself a king;

except the characterizing of the ‘learned praise,’ which comes afterwards in its fine subtle truth.  What would these critics do to you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians?  As if a poet could be great without it!  They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!  You shall tell Mr. Forster so.

And speaking of ‘Luria,’ which grows on me the more I read, ... how fine he is when the doubt breaks on him—­I mean, when he begins ...  ‘Why then, all is very well.’  It is most affecting, I think, all that process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....

               ... ’so slight, so slight,
    And yet it tells you they are dead and gone’—­

And then, the direct approach....

    You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
    What is it in your eyes?—­

Do you not feel it to be success, ... ‘you now?’ I do, from my low ground as reader.  The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the manner in which he stands, facing it, ...  I admire it all thoroughly.  Braccio’s vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too poetically subtle for the man—­but nobody could have the heart to wish a line of it away—­that would be too much for critical virtue!

I had your letter yesterday morning early.  The post-office people were so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me keep mine.  No post all day, after that general post before noon, which never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!

Am I to see you on Monday?  If there should be the least, least crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to listen to,—­remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another Monday comes on the following week.  Now I need not say that every time, and you will please to remember it—­Eccellenza!—­