lf as well as I could from the moral imputation of loving Peni
better than Ferdinando.

We have been very glad in a visit from Frederick Tennyson.... God bless
you! Robert won't wait.

Your ever attached
BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: February 2, 1857 [postmark].

My dearest Mona Nina,--To begin (lest I forget before the ending), don't
mind the sugar-tongs, if you have not actually bought them, inasmuch as,
to my astonishment, Wilson has found a pair in Florence, marking the
progress of civilisation in this South. In Paris last winter we sought
in vain. There was nothing between one's fingers and real silver--too
expensive for poets. But now we are supplied splendidly--and at the cost
of five pauls, let me tell you.

Always delighted I am to have your letters, even when you don't tell me
as touchingly as in this that mine are something to you. Do I not indeed
love you and _sympathise_ with you fully and deeply? Yes, indeed. On one
subject I am afraid to touch. But I _know_ why it is you feel so long,
so unduly--so morbidly, in a sense. People in general, knowing
themselves to be innocently made to suffer, would take comfort in
righteous indignation and justified contempt: but to you the indignation
and contempt would be the worst part of suffering; you can't bear it,
and you are in a strait between the two. In fact, it relieves you rather
to take part against yourself, and to conclude on the whole that there's
something really bad in you calling on the pure Heavens for vengeance.
Yes, that's _you_. You sympathise tenderly with your executioner....

And as for the critics--yes, indeed, I agree with you that I have no
reason to complain. More than that, I confess to you that I am entirely
astonished at the amount of reception I have met with--I who expected to
be put in the stocks and pelted with the eggs of the last twenty years'
'singing birds' as a disorderly woman and freethinking poet! People have
been so kind that, in the first place, I really come to modify my
opinions somewhat upon their conventionality, to see the progress made
in freedom of thought. Think of quite decent women taking the part of
the book in a sort of _effervescence_ which I hear of with astonishment.
In fact, there has been an enormous quantity of extravagance talked and
written on the subject, and I _know it_--oh, I know it. I wish I
deserved some things--some things; I wish it were all t