saddened by Lady Byron's state of health, and anxious about Gerardine
perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming
to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in
Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the
fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may be. Now, would it not
do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into
the sun? Surely it would do her great good; the change, the calm, the
atmosphere of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully
with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, and thanks to
the panic, is tolerably _clean_ of the English--you scarcely see an
English face anywhere--and perhaps this was a circumstance that helped
to give Robert courage to take our apartment here and 'settle down.'
You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe,
though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in
your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without
seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But
observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just
nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and
the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable
altogether. At Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and
the distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of the
subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books,
turning the cock easily, it would be perfect; but as to _anything_ new
in the book way, Vieusseux seems to have made a vow against it, and
poor Robert comes and goes in a state of desperation between me and
the bookseller ('But what _can_ I do, Ba?'), and only brings news
of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush of
republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think
of our not having read 'Lucretia' yet--George Sand's. And Balzac is
six or seven works deep from us; but these are evils to be borne. We
live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, and receiving
them in the quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who
wrote the 'Letters from Palmyra,' and is a delightful, earnest, simple
person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week, and very
much we like him. Mr. Hillard, another cultivated American friend of
ours, you have in London, and we should gladly have kept lo