Your ever affectionate sister,
BA.

To Mrs. Martin Florence:  May 14, [1849].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­At last I come to thank you for all your kindness, all your goodness, all your sympathy for both of us.  Robert would have written to you in the first instance (for we both thought of you) if we had not agreed that you would hear as quickly from Henrietta, we not knowing your direct address.  Also your welcome little note should have had an immediate acknowledgment from him if he had not been so depressed at that time that I was glad to ask him to wait till I should be ready to write myself.  In fact, he has suffered most acutely from the affliction you have since of course heard of; and just because he was too happy when the child was born, the pain was overwhelming afterwards.  That is easy to understand, I think.  While he was full of joy for the child, his mother was dying at a distance, and the very thought of accepting that new affection for the old became a thing to recoil from—­do you not see?  So far from suffering less through the particular combination of circumstances, as some people seemed to fancy he would, he suffered much more, I am certain, and very naturally.  Even now he is looking very unwell—­thinner and paler than usual, and his spirits, which used to be so good, have not rallied.  I long to get him away from Florence somewhere—­where, I can’t fix my wishes; our English plans seem flat on the ground for the present, that is one sad certainty.  My dearest sisters will be very grieved if we don’t go to England, and yet how can I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of old associations where he would feel so much pain?  Do I not know what I myself should suffer in some places?  And he loved his mother with all his power of loving, which is deeper and more passionate than love is with common men.  She hearts of men are generally strong in proportion to their heads.  Well, I am not to send you such a dull letter though, after waiting so long, and after receiving so much to speak thankfully of.  My child you never would believe to be my child, from the evidence of his immense cheeks and chins—­for pray don’t suppose that he has only one chin.  People call him a lovely child, and if I were to call him the same it wouldn’t be very extraordinary, only I assure you ‘a robust child’ I may tell you that he is with a sufficient modesty, and also that Wilson says he is universally admired in various tongues when she and the nurse go out with him to the Cascine—­’What a beautiful baby!’ and ‘Che bel bambino!’ He has had a very stormy entrance upon life, poor little fellow; and when he was just three days old, a grand festa round the liberty tree planted at our door, attended with military music, civic dancing and singing, and the firing of cannons and guns from morning to night, made him start in his cradle, and threw my careful nurse into paroxysms of devotion before the