May God bless you, my dear friend!

Love your affectionate and grateful, for so many
reasons,
BA.

The death of Wordsworth on April 23 left the Laureateship vacant,
and though there was probably never any likelihood of Mrs. Browning's
being invited to succeed him, it is worth noticing that her claims
were advocated by so prominent a paper as the 'Athenaeum,' which not
only urged that the appointment would be eminently suitable under a
female sovereign, but even expressed its opinion that 'there is no
living poet of either sex who can prefer a higher claim than Mrs.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.' No doubt there would have been a certain
appropriateness in the post of Laureate to a Queen being held by a
poetess, but the claims of Tennyson to the primacy of English poetry
were rightly regarded as paramount. The fact that in Robert Browning
there was a poet of equal calibre with Tennyson, though of so
different a type, seems to have occurred to no one.

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: June 15, 1850.

My ever dear Friend,--How it grieves me that you should have been
so unwell again! From what you say about the state of the house, I
conclude that your health suffers from that cause precisely; and that
when you are warmly and dryly walled in, you will be less liable to
these attacks, grievous to your friends as to you. Oh, I don't praise
anybody, I assure you, for wishing to entice you to live near them.
We come over the Alps for a sunny climate; what should we not do for
a moral atmosphere like yours? I dare say you have chosen excellently
your new residence, and I hope you will get over the fuss of it with
great courage, remembering the advantages which it is likely to secure
to you. Tell me as much as you can about it all, that I may shift the
scene in the right grooves, and be able to imagine you to myself out
of Three Mile Cross. You have the local feeling so eminently that I
have long been resolved on never asking you to migrate. Doves
won't travel with swallows; who should persuade them? This is no
migration--only a shifting from one branch to another. With Reading
on one side of you still, you will lose nothing, neither sight nor
friend. Oh, do write to me as soon as you can, and say that the
deepening summer has done you good and given you strength; say it,
if possible. I shall be very anxious for the next letter.... My only
objection to Florence is the distance from London, and the expense of
the journey. One