letter to quite the last, as if they were indifferent, or, at most, bits of Mrs. Manning’s murder.  By the way and talking of murder, how do you account for the crown of wickedness which England bears just now over the heads of the nations, in murders of all kinds, by poison, by pistol, by knife?  In this poor Tuscany, which has not brains enough to govern itself, as you observe, and as really I can’t deny, there have been two murders (properly so called) since we came, just three years ago, one from jealousy and one from revenge (respectable motives compared to the advantages of the burying societies!), and the horror on all sides was great, as if the crime were some rare prodigy, which, indeed, it is in this country.  We have no punishment of death here, observe!  The people are gentle, courteous, refined, and tenderhearted.  What Balzac would call ‘femmelette.’  All Tuscany is ‘Lucien’ himself.  The leaning to the artistic nature without the strength of genius implies demoralisation in most cases, and it is this which makes your ‘good for nothing poets and poetesses,’ about which I love so to battle with you.  Genius, I maintain always, you know, is a purifying power and goes with high moral capacities.  Well, and so you invite us home to civilisation and ‘the “Times” newspaper.’  We mean to go next spring, and shall certainly do so unless something happen to catch us and keep us in a net.  But always something does happen:  and I have so often built upon seeing England, and been precipitated from the fourth storey, that I have learnt to think warily now.  I hunger and thirst for the sight of some faces; must I not long, do you think, to see your face?  And then, I shall be properly proud to show my child to those who loved me before him.  He is beginning to understand everything—­chiefly in Italian, of course, as his nurse talks in her sleep, I fancy, and can’t be silent a second in the day—­and when told to ‘dare un bacio a questo povero Flush,’ he mixes his little face with Flush’s ears in a moment....  You would wonder to see Flush just now.  He suffered this summer from the climate somewhat as usual, though not nearly as much as usual; and having been insulted oftener than once by a supposition of ‘mange,’ Robert wouldn’t bear it any longer (he is as fond of Flush as I am), and, taking a pair of scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness of a lion, much to his advantage in both health and appearance.  In the winter he is always quite well; but the heat and the fleas together are too much in the summer.  The affection between baby and him is not equal, baby’s love being far the stronger.  He, on the other hand, looks down upon baby.  What bad news you tell me of our French writers!  What!  Is it possible that Dumas even is struck dumb by the revolution?  His first works are so incomparably the worst that I can’t admit your theory of the ‘first runnings.’  So of Balzac.  So of Sue!  George Sand is probably writing ‘banners’