near Shelley’s in the end of your letter, where you say ‘since I lost Shelley’.  Is it not strange that I should have transcribed for the first time, last night, the Indian Serenade that, together with some verses of Metastasio, accompanied that book?  That I should have been reserved to tell the present possessor of them—­to whom they were given by Captain Roberts—­what the poem was, and that it had been published!  It is preserved religiously; but the characters are all but illegible, and I needed a good magnifying-glass to be quite sure of such of them as remain.  The end is that I have rescued three or four variations in the reading of that divine little poem, as one reads it, at least, in the Posthumous Poems.  It is headed the Indian Serenade (not Lines to an Indian Air).  In the first stanza the seventh line is ’Hath led me’; in the second, the third line is ‘And the champak’s odours fail’; and the eighth, ‘O!  Beloved as thou art!’ In the last stanza, the seventh line was, ‘Oh, press it to thine own again.’  Are not all these better readings? (even to the ‘Hath’ for ’Has’.) There, I give them you as you gave us Milton’s hair.  If I have mistaken in telling you, you will understand and forgive.

I think I will ask my wife to say a word or two so I shall be sure that you forgive.  Now let my wife say the remainder.  All I have wished to do—­know how little likely it was that I should succeed in that—­was to assure you of my pride and affectionate gratitude.—­God bless you ever,

R.B.

Dear friend, I will say; for I feel it must be something as good as friendship that can forgive and understand this silence, so much like the veriest human kind of ingratitude.  When I look back and think—­all this time after that letter, and not a sign made—­I wonder.  Yet, if you knew!  First of all, we were silent because we waited for information which you seemed to desire....  Then there were sadder reasons.  Poor Aurora, that you were so more than kind to (oh, how can I think of it?), has been steeped in tears, and some of them of a very bitter sort.  Your letter was addressed to my husband, you knowing by your delicate true instinct where your praise would give most pleasure; but I believe Robert had not the heart to write when I felt that I should not have the spirits to add a word in the proper key.  When we came here from Florence a few months ago to get repose and cheerfulness from the sight of the mountains, we said to ourselves that we would speak to you at ease—­instead of which the word was taken from our own mouth, and we have done little but sit by sick beds and meditate on gastric fevers.  So disturbed we have been—­so sad! our darling precious child the last victim.  To see him lying still on his golden curls, with cheeks too scarlet to suit the poor patient eyes, looking so frightfully like an angel!  It was very hard.  But this is over, I do thank God, and we are on the point of