nother letter. On the contrary, I _entreat_ you not to attempt to
write a word to me with your own hand, until you can do so without
effort and suffering. In the meanwhile, would it be impossible for K. to
send me in one line some account of you? I don't mean to tease, but I
should be very glad and thankful to have news of you though in the
briefest manner, and if a letter were addressed to me at Poste Restante,
Florence, it would reach me, as we rest there on our road to Paris and
London. In any case I shall see you this summer, if it shall please God;
and stay with you the half hour you allow, and kiss your dear hands and
feel again, I hope, the brightness of your smile. As the green summer
comes on you must be the better surely; if you can bear to lie out under
the trees, the general health will rally and the local injury correct
itself. You must have a strong, energetic vitality; and, after all,
spinal disorders do not usually attack life, though they disable and
overthrow. The pain you endure is the terrible thing. Has a local
application of chloroform been ever tried? I catch at straws, perhaps,
with my unlearned hands, but it's the instinct of affection. While you
suffer, my dear friend, the world is applauding you. I catch sight of
stray advertisements and fragmentary notices of 'Atherton,' which seems
to have been received everywhere with deserved claps of hands. This will
not be comfort to you, perhaps; but you will feel the satisfaction which
every workman feels in successful work. I think the edition of plays and
poems has not yet appeared, and I suppose there will be nothing in
_that_ which can be new to us. 'Atherton' I thirst for, but the cup will
be dry, I dare say, till I get to England, for new books even at
Florence take waiting for far beyond all necessary bounds. We shall not
stay long in Tuscany. We want to be in England late in June or very
early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert's
family are resident there. To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian
complacency. I don't pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It's
a palimpsest Rome--a watering-place written over the antique--and I
haven't taken to it as a poet should, I suppose; only let us speak the
truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and
the associations of the place have not been personally favorable to me.
Among the rest my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell
lately