r did in my life, and
hope and fear in paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more
of Paris than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial
difficulties and social theories with the best will in the world;
much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and
jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good
deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however,
I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in
England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the
French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not
in many respects more advanced than England is now, property better
divided, hereditary privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the
trumpet because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they are
mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to the Chartists, it is
only a pity in my mind that you have not more of them. That's their
fault. Mine, you will say, is being pert about politics when you would
rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of
my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with
blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge
to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and
round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....

Meanwhile here we are--and when do you mean to come to see us, pray?
Mind, I hold by the skirts of the vision for next winter. Why, surely
_you_ won't talk of 'disturbances' and 'revolutions,' and the like
disloyal reasons which send our brave countrymen flying on all sides,
as if every separate individual expected to be bombarded _per
se_. Now, mind you come; dear dear Mr. Kenyon, how delighted past
expression we should be to see you! Ah, do you fancy that I have no
regret for our delightful gossips? If I have the feeling I told you of
for Balzac and George Sand, what must I have for _you_? Now come,
and let us see you! And still sooner, if you please, write to us--and
write of yourself and in detail--and tell us particularly, first if
the winter has left no sign of a cough with you, and next, what you
mean by something which suggests to my fancy that you have a book in
the course of printing. Is that true? Tell me all about it--_all_! Who
can be interested, pray, if _I_ am not? For your and Mr. Chorley's
and Mr. Forster's kind dealings with Robert's poems I thank