will be good for her, even if, as she says, she can stay with us only a few weeks.  With her we shall have your book, to be disinherited of which so long has been hard on us.  Robert’s own we have not seen yet.  It must be satisfactory to you to have had such a clear triumph after all the dust and toil of the way.  And now tell me, won’t it be necessary for you to come again to Italy for what remains to be done?  Poor Florence is quiet enough under the heel of Austria, and Leopold ‘l’intrepido,’ as he was happily called by a poet of Viareggio in a welcoming burst of inspiration, sits undisturbed at the Pitti.  I despair of the republic in Italy, or rather of Italy altogether.  The instructed are not patriotic, and the patriots are not instructed.  We want not only a man, but men, and we must throw, I fear, the bones of their race behind us before the true deliverers can spring up.  Still, it is not all over; there will be deliverance presently, but it will not be now.  We are full of painful sympathy for poor Venice.  There! why write more about politics?  It makes us sick enough to think of Austrians in our Florence without writing the thought out into greater expansion.  Only don’t let the ‘Times’ newspaper persuade you that there is no stepping with impunity out of England. ...  We have ‘lectures on Shakespeare’ just now by a Mr. Stuart, who is enlightening the English barbarians at the lower village, and quoting Mrs. Jameson to make his discourse more brilliant.  We like to hear ‘Mrs. Jameson observes.’  Give our love to dear Gerardine.  I am anxious for her happiness and yours involved in it.  Love and remember us, dearest friend.

Your E.B.B., or rather, BA.

The following note is added in Mr. Browning’s handwriting: 

Dear Aunt Nina,—­Will there be three years before I see you again?  And Geddie; does she not come to Italy?  When we passed through Pisa the other day, we went to your old inn in love of you, and got your very room to dine in (the landlord is dead and gone, as is Peveruda—­of the other house, you remember).  There were the old vile prints, the old look-out into the garden, with its orange trees and painted sentinel watching them.  Ba must have told you about our babe, and the little else there is to tell—­that is, for her to tell, for she is not likely to encroach upon my story which I could tell of her entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever made; I know more of her every day; I, who thought I knew something of her five years ago!  I think I know you, too, so I love you and am

Ever yours and dear Geddie’s
R.B.

To Miss Mitford Bagni di Lucca:  August 31, 1849.