The sea will not be frozen, beside ... which makes me think to tell you that Carlyle is wanting to visit only one foreign country—Iceland. The true cradle of the Northmen and their virtues ... all that is worth a Northman’s caring to see is there, he thinks, and nowise in Italy. Perhaps! Indeed, so I reason and say—Did I not once turn on myself and speak against the Southern spirit, and even Dante, just because of that conviction?—(or imperfect conviction, whence the uneasy exaggeration). Carlyle thinks modern Italy’s abasement a direct judgment from God. ‘Here is a nation in whose breast arise men who could doubt, examine the new problems of the reformation &c.—trim the balance at intervals, and throw overboard the accumulation of falsehood—all other nations around, less favoured, are doing it laboriously for themselves ... now is the time for the acumen of the Bembos, the Bentivoglios and so forth ... and these and their like, one and all, turn round, decline the trouble, say ‘these things may be true, or they may not, meantime let us go on verse-making, painting, music-scoring’—to which all the nation accedes as if relieved of a trouble—upon which God bids the Germans go in and possess them; pluck their fruits and feel their sun after their own hard work.’ Carlyle said the sense of this, between two huge pipe-whiffs, the other afternoon.
‘Pluck their fruits’—some four years ago I planted ... or held straight while my mother planted, a fig-tree,—for love of Italy! This year it bears its first fruit ... a single one! what does that bode?
Since I wrote the last paragraph, the wind took my thoughts away, as it always does, and I saw you again as I used to see, before I knew you, so very substanceless, faint, unreal—when I was struck by the reality again,—by this paper,—by to-morrow’s visit I shall pay ... it was as if someone had said ‘but that star is your own.’
I fancied you just what I find you—I knew you from the beginning.
Let me kiss you dearest dearest—
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 30, 1846.]
The gods and men call you by your name, but I never do—never dare. In case of invocation, tell me how you should be called by such as I? not to be always the ‘inexpressive He’ which I make of you. In case of courage for invocation!—
Dearest ... (which is a name too) read on the paper inside what I have been studying about Salerno since we parted yesterday. Forsyth is too severe in his deductions, perhaps, from the apothecaries, but your Naples book will not help me to contradict him, saying neither the one thing nor the other. The word we could not read in the letter yesterday, was La Cava—and La Cava is a town on the way between Naples and Salerno, which Mrs. Stark describes as ‘a large town with porticoes on each side of the High Street, like those at Bologna.’ To which the letter adds, remember ‘enchantingly beautiful, very good air and no English. Then there is Vietri, mentioned by Forsyth, between La Cava and Salerno, and on the bay. It is as well to think of all three. Were you ever at either? Amalfi itself appears to be very habitable. Oh—and your Naples book says of Salerno, that it is illuminated by fireflies, and that the chanting of frogs covers the noises of the city. You will like the frogs, if you don’t the apothecaries, and I shall like the fireflies if I don’t the frogs—but I do like frogs, you know, and it was quite a mistake of yours when you once thought otherwise.
Now I am going out in the carriage, to call on Mr. Kenyon, and perhaps to see Mr. Boyd. Your flowers are more beautiful than they were yesterday, if possible: and the fresh coolness helps them to live, so, that I hope you may see some of them on Saturday when you come. On Saturday! What a time to wait! if not for them, yet for me. Of the two, it is easier for them, certainly. They only miss a little dew and air.