Ever dearest Miss Mitford,—I am delighted to have your letter, and lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not appear. The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[[167]] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,' one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely sensual as fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs. Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national music, I don't know; I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have done well—men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.' Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught I know, of course; but you sha'n't say that he has not done some fine things in poetry. Now, you know what the first book of 'Orion' is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you sha'n't say that you don't know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay, however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence. So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of public sympathy and overflowing the city. The procession passed under our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on all sides were most affecting to look upon. Grave men kissed one another, and grateful young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles, and the children themselves mixed their shrill little vivas with the shouts of the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed. During three hours and a half the procession wound on past our windows, and every inch of every house seemed alive with gazers all that time, the white handkerchiefs fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel leaves floating down on the heads of those who passed. Banners, too, with inscriptions to suit the popular feeling—'Liberty'—the 'Union of Italy'—the 'Memory of the Martyrs'—'Viva Pio Nono'—'Viva Leopoldo Secondo'—were quite stirred with the breath of the shouters. I am glad to have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment, when such sights are to be seen.[[168]] My wrist aches a little even now with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I assure you, for Robert and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at the window, and would not be reserved with the tribute of our sympathy. Flush had his two front paws over the window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he confessed at last that he thought they were rather long about it, particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken bones and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented and looks better; in excellent spirits and appetite always—and thinner, like your Flush—and very fond of Robert, as indeed he ought to be. On the famous evening of that famous day I have been speaking of, we lost him—he ran away and stayed away all night—which was too bad, considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he had no right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered with the crowd and the illumination, only as he did look so very guilty and conscious of evil on his return, there's room for suspecting him of having been very much amused, 'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the edict. He was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our apartment, waiting to be let in—mind, I don't mean the Grand Duke. Very few acquaintances have we made at Florence, and very quietly lived out our days. Mr. Powers the sculptor is our chief friend and favorite, a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American, as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much. His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light. You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl of Cork, and authoress and poetess on her own account, having been introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one, which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read 'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's 'Lucretia.'

May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate E.B.B.

The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter. During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters, Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of 'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty. It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had ascended the papal throne—then a temporal as well as a spiritual sovereignty—in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative, Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first step in the direction of popular government by the institution of a National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope much.

Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning's letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In 1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy. But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that follow. It is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'—the first part written in 1847-8, the second in 1851—that her reflections upon Italian politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.

To Miss Mitford

Florence: December 8, 1847.

Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows. Also I heard of you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and that made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to the Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract. You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the way of domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round O' in the air in this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to his being angry with me for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening; and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels, to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when, day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere. The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the other morning as we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they would use those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-être.' I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see; one can't help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of the people by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal, you who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something in a clear water. For poor Mrs.——, if she is really, as you say Mrs. Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why that only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot believe of any woman that she can think of fame first. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! so cold, so empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome, as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty. Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic, who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to view me in the new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and accomplishment, never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too, she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face divine,' masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert go out a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It's twenty-four o'clock with us almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of Tennyson's book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the pressure of dress, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a wonderful discovery this substitute for ether inhalations[[169]] seems to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine. We have not set up the types even of our plans about a book, very distinctly, but we shall do something some day, and you shall hear of it the evening before. Being too happy doesn't agree with literary activity quite as well as I should have thought; and then, dear Mr. Kenyon can't persuade us that we are not rich enough, so as to bring into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still. Now write, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your health, and do, do love me as you used to do. As to French books, one may swear, but you can't get a new publication, except by accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux, and I am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert together. You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon, with shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not eating enough!), was brought up by Masson's pamphlet on the Iron Mask and Fouquet. I wouldn't be persuaded that Fouquet was 'in it,' and so 'the anger of my lord waxed hot.' To this day he says sometimes: 'Don't be cross, Ba! Fouquet wasn't the Iron Mask after all.'

God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.