to by good-natured MS. It is extraordinary to me that with his amount of development, as far as I understand it, he has met with so much rapid recognition.  Tell me if you have read ‘Queechy,’ the American book—­novel—­by Elizabeth Wetherell?  I think it very clever and characteristic.  Mrs. Beecher Stowe scarcely exceeds it, after all the trumpets.  We are about to have a visit from Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward’s only son—­only child now.  Did I tell you that he was a poet—­yes, and of an unquestionable faculty?  I expect much from him one day, when he shakes himself clear of the poetical influences of the age, which he will have strength to do presently.  He thinks as well as sees, and that is good....

Oh yes!  I like Mr. Kingsley.  I am glad he spoke kindly of us, because really I like him and admire him.  Few people have struck me as much as he did last year in England.  ‘Manly,’ do you say?  But I am not very fond of praising men by calling them manly.  I hate and detest a masculine man. Humanly bold, brave, true, direct, Mr. Kingsley is—­a moral cordiality and an original intellect uniting in him.  I did not see her and the children, but I hope we shall be in better fortune next time.

Since I began this letter the Storys and ourselves have had a grand donkey-excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak.  We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices; but the scenery was exquisite—­past speaking of for beauty.  Oh those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts, and setting their teeth against the sky!  It was wonderful.  You may as well guess at a lion by a lady’s lapdog as at Nature by what you see in England.  All honour to England, lanes and meadowland, notwithstanding; to the great trees above all.  Will you write to me sooner?  Will you give me the details of yourself?  Will you love me?

Your most affectionate
BA.

* * * * *

To Miss E.F.  Haworth

Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca: 
August 30, [1853].

Dearest Fanny,—­On your principle that ‘there’s too much to say,’ I ought not to think of writing to you these three months; you have pleased me and made me grateful to such an extremity by your most pretty and graceful illustrative outlines.  The death-bed I admire particularly; the attitudes are very expressive, and the open window helps the sentiment.  What am I to say for your kindness in holding a torch of this kind (perfumed for the ‘nobilities’) between the wind and my poems?  Thank you, thank you.  And when that’s said, I ought to stop short and beg you, dear Fanny, not to waste yourself in more labour of this kind, seeing that I am accursed and that nothing is to be done with my books and me, as far as my public is concerned.  Why not get up a book of your own, a collection of ‘outlines’ illustrative of everybody’s poems, which would