I had a letter the other day from Mr. Chorley, and he was chivalrous enough (I call it real chivalry in his state of opinion) to deliver to me a message from Mr. Westland Marston, whom he met at Folkestone, and who kindly proposes to write a full account to me of his own spiritual experiences, having heard from you that they were likely to interest me; I mean that I was interested in the whole subject.  Will you tell him from me that I shall be most thankful for anything he will vouchsafe to write to me, and will you give him my address?  I don’t know where to find him, and Mr. Chorley is on the Continent wandering.  I have seen nothing for myself, but I am a believer upon testimony; and a stream of Americans running through Florence, and generally making way to us, the testimony has been various and strong.  Interested in the subject!  Who can be uninterested in the subject?  Even Robert is interested, who professes to be a sceptic, an infidel indeed (though I can swear to having seen him considerably shaken more than once), and who promises never to believe till he has experience by his own senses.  Isn’t it hard on me that I can’t draw a spirit into our circle and convince him?  He would give much, he says, to find it true....

Here an end.  Write soon and write much.

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B. (called BA).

Our child was gathering box leaves in a hedge the other day (wherever we have a hedge, it’s box, I would have you to understand), and pulled a yellow flower by mistake.  Down he flung it as if it stung him.  ’Ah, brutto!  Colore Tedesco!’ Think of that baby!

* * * * *

To Mr. Westwood

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

As to Patmore’s new volume of poems, my husband and I had the pleasure of reading in MS. the poem which gives its title to the book.  He has a great deal of thought and poetry in him.  Alexander Smith I know by copious extracts in reviews, and by some MSS. once sent to us by friends and readers.  Judging from those he must be set down as a true poet in opulence of imagery, but defective, so far (he is said to be very young) in the intellectual part of poetry.  His images are flowers thrown to him by the gods, beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Enna or Olympus.  There’s no unity and holding together, no reality properly so called, no thinking of any kind.  I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of him:  ‘He has fancy without imagination.’  Still, it is difficult to say at the dawn what may be written at noon.  Certainly he is very rich and full of colour; nothing is more surprising to me than his favourable reception with the critics.  I should have thought that his very merits would be against him.