[Florence: winter 1852-3.]
[The beginning of the letter is lost]
The state of things here in Tuscany is infamous and cruel. The old serpent, the Pope, is wriggling his venom into the heart of all possibilities of free thought and action. It is a dreadful state of things. Austria the hand, the papal power the brain! and no energy in the victim for resistance—only for hatred. They do hate here, I am glad to say.
But we linger at Florence in spite of all. It was delightful to find ourselves in the old nest, still warm, of Casa Guidi, to sit in our own chairs and sleep in our own beds; and here we shall stay as late perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from home since we came—just as if we had never known Paris. People come sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, such as Mr. Tennyson (the poet's brother) and Mr. Lytton (the novelist's son) and Mr. Stuart, the lecturer on Shakespeare, whom once I named to you, I fancy. Mr. Tennyson married an Italian, and has four children. He has much of the atmosphere poetic about him, a dreamy, speculative, shy man, reminding us of his brother in certain respects; good and pure-minded. I like him. Young Mr. Lytton is very young, as you may suppose, with all sorts of high aspirations—and visionary enough to suit me, which is saying much—and affectionate, with an apparent liking to us both, which is engaging to us, of course. We have seen the Trollopes once, the younger ones, but the elder Mrs. Trollope was visible neither at that time nor since....
I sit here reading Dumas' 'last,' notwithstanding. Dumas is astonishing; he never will write himself out; there's no dust on his shoes after all this running; his last books are better than his first.
Do your American friends write ever to you about the rapping spirits? I hear and would hear much of them. It is said that at least fifteen thousand persons in America, of all classes and society, are mediums, as the term is. Most curious these phenomena.
[The end of the letter is lost]