Ah, Sarianna, 'charming old men' who call the Tuscans angels, except that they lie (what an exception!), can be mistaken like others. That passes for 'liberality,' does it? We are not angels, and we don't lie—there's no more lying in Italy than in England, I begin to affirm. Also, M. Tassinari was in prison, not a week but a month—and well did he deserve it. We deal now in French coinage, and are to see no more pauls after the middle of next month. Robert thinks it will destroy the last vestige of our cheapness, but I am very favorable to a unification of international coinage. It agrees with my theories, you know.
We are all talking and dreaming Garibaldi just now in great anxiety. Scarcely since the world was a world has there been such a feat of arms. All modern heroes grow pale before him. It was necessary, however, for us all even here, and at Turin just as in Paris, to be ready to disavow him. The whole good of Central Italy was hazarded by it. If it had not been success it would have been an evil beyond failure. The enterprise was forlorner than a forlorn hope. The hero, if he had perished, would scarcely have been sure of his epitaph even.
And 'intervention' does mean quite a different thing at Naples and in Lombardy. In Lombardy there was the foreign tyrant. At Naples Italians deal with Italians; and the Austrian influence is indirect. So also at Rome. It is this which makes the difficulty of dealing with Southern Italy and the difference of treatment which you observe in certain French papers.
I am sure, though you don't like photographs, you say, that you will find nothing lacking in what we send you and dearest Nonno of our Penini. It isn't like him, it's himself. As for me, I murmur, in the depths of my vanity, that like the Emperor Napoleon (and the devil) I'm not so black as I'm painted; but I forgive everything for Pen's sake. Robert is not very favourably represented, I think. The beard on the upper lip had not been properly clipped, and makes the space seem too long for him. Another time I will mend that. I was very unusually tired after my journey, but am getting past it. Weather was hot; but within two days we have had some cooling rain.
Give my best love to M. Milsand, beside the photographs, and thank him for not being offended in his 'patriotism' by my Congress poems. If he approved of the preface as he says, I can't see how he can have written anything about 'intervention' which I would not accept. Nothing could have ended the intervention of Austria, except the intervention of France; and it was on that account that we feel the latter to be a great and chivalrous action. Italy is grateful. And if France were in difficulty she might count on this delivered nation, as on herself. In spite of all the bad words hurled at me in every English newspaper and periodical nearly (and I assure you I have been put in the pillory among them) the poems are going into a second edition, Chapman says, and 'Aurora Leigh' into a fifth. Also Chapman junior, who has come out here to see after Lever, smoothes me down a little about Robert, and says that the sale is bettering itself, and that a new edition of the 'Poems' will soon be wanted. I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in 'Bentley's Magazine.' Abuse of the 'Congress Poems,' of course. Then a side stroke at 'Aurora Leigh,' which was original, of course, because it's my way to stand alone and attack people; but the principal merit of which otherwise was the suggestion of 'Lucille' (Lytton's new poem)—'Lucille,' says the critic, being superior in holiness and virtue and that sort of thing to 'Aurora'! Of course.
They subscribed in England five thousand pounds for Tom Sayers. There's the advance of civilisation. Napoleon has gone to Baden to arrange the world a little more comfortably, I hope.
Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans have been here, and are coming back to settle into our congenial bosom. I admire her books so much, that certainly I shall not refuse to receive her, though she is not a medium. Sarianna!
Your ever affectionate sister.
The programme of the previous year was repeated in 1860. Returning from Rome to Florence at the beginning of June, the Brownings in July went to Siena to avoid the extreme heat of the summer at Florence, staying as before at the Villa Alberti. Their visit to Siena was, however, rather shorter than the previous one, lasting only till September.