all dignity has been repeatedly forgotten in simple rage.  Affairs of Italy generally are going on to the goal, and we look for the best and glorious results, perhaps not without more fighting.  Certainly we can’t leave Venetia in the mouth of Austria by a second Villafranca.  We cannot and will not.  And, sooner or later, the Emperor is prepared, I think, to carry us through.  Odo Russell told me (without my putting any question to him) that everything, as it came out, proved how true he had been to Italy—­that, in fact, he had ’rather acted as an Italian than as a Frenchman.’  And Mr. Russell, while liberal, is himself very English, and free from Buonaparte tendencies from hair to heel.

We often have letters from dear Isa Blagden, who sends me the Florence news, more shining from day to day.  Central Italy seems safe.

But let me tell you of my thin slice of a wicked book.  Yes, I shall expect you to read it, and I send you an order for it to Chapman, therefore.  Everybody will hate me for it, and so you must try hard to love me the more to make up for that.  Say it’s mad, and bad, and sad; but add that somebody did it who meant it, thought it, felt it, throbbed it out with heart and brain, and that she holds it for truth in conscience and not in partisanship.  I want to tell you (oh, I can’t help telling you) that when the ode was read before Peni, at the part relating to Italy his eyes overflowed, and down he threw himself on the sofa, hiding his face.  The child has been very earnest about Italian politics.  The heroine of that poem called ’The Dance’[74] was Madame di Laiatico.  The ‘Court Lady’ is an individualisation of a general fashion, the ladies at Milan having gone to the hospitals in full dress and in open carriages.  Macmahon taking up the child[75] is also historical.  I believe the facts to be in the book:  ’He has done it all,’[76] were Cavour’s words.  When you see an advertisement and have an opportunity to apply at Chapman’s, do so ‘by this sign’ enclosed.  I read of you in the papers, stirring up the women.

Write and say how you are, and where you are.

[Part of this letter is missing.]

Your ever very affectionate
BA.

I hope you liked the article on the immorality of luncheon-rooms in your high-minded ‘Saturday Review.’

FOOTNOTES: 

[62] Prime Minister of Piedmont from 1849-52, and one of the most honourable and patriotic of Italian statesmen.

[63] Subsequently English ambassador at Berlin, and one of the plenipotentiaries at the Berlin Congress of 1878.  Created Lord Ampthill in 1881, and died in 1884.

[64] Now in the possession of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.

[65] The conferences for the arrangement of the final treaty of peace were held at Zurich.

[66] Of Tuscany with Piedmont, which was voted by Tuscany in August.  Modena, Parma, and Romagna did the same, and so made the critical step towards the creation of a united Italy.