eally be
dood,' and learning everything by magnetism, getting on in seven weeks,
for instance, to read French quite surprisingly. He has written a poem
on the war and the peace, called 'Soldiers going and coming,' which
Robert and I thought so remarkable that I sent it to Mr. Forster. Oh,
such a darling, that child is! I expect the wings to grow presently.

As for my poem (far below Penini's), I work on steadily and have put in
order and transcribed five books, containing in all above six thousand
lines ready for the press. I have another book to put together and
transcribe, and then must begin the composition part of one or two more
books, I suppose. I must be ready for printing by the time we go to
England, in June. Robert too is much occupied with 'Sordello,'[49] and
we neither of us receive anybody till past four o'clock. I mean that
when you have read my new book, you put away all my other poems or most
of them, and know me only by the new. Oh, I am so anxious to make it
good. I have put much of myself in it--I mean to say, of my soul, my
thoughts, emotions, opinions; in other respects, there is not a personal
line, of course. It's a sort of poetic art-novel. If it's a failure,
there will be the comfort of having made a worthy effort, of having done
it as well as I could. Write soon to me, and love us both constantly, as
we do you.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

[Paris]: May 2, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Mona Nina,--It's very pleasant always to get letters from
you, and such kind dear letters, showing that you haven't broken the
tether-strings in search of 'pastures new,' weary of our cropped grass.

As for news, you have most of the persons upon whom you care for gossip
in your hand now--Mrs. Sartoris, Madame Viardot, Lady Monson, and the
Ristori herself. Robert went to see her twice, because Lady Monson led
him by the hand kindly, and was charmed; thought the Medee very fine,
but won't join in the cry about miraculous genius and Rachel
out-Racheled. He thinks that as far as the highest and largest
development of sensibility can go, she is very great; but that for those
grand and sudden _apercus_ which have distinguished actors--such as
Kean, for instance--he does not acknowledge them in her. You have heard
perhaps how Dickens and others, Macready among the rest, depreciated
her. Dickens went so far as to say, I understand, that no English
au