for the ‘Reds,’ which, considering the state of parties in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of her intelligence or virtue.  Ledru Rollin’s[190] confidante and councillor can’t occupy an honorable position, and I am sorry, for her sake and ours.  When we go to Florence we must try to get the ‘Portraits’ and Lamartine’s autobiography, which I still more long to see.  So, two women were in love with him, were they?  That must be a comfort to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him.  I see by extracts from his newspaper in Galignani that he can’t be accused of temporising with the Socialists any longer, whatever other charge may be brought against him:  and if, as he says, it was he who made the French republic, he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad and false thing.  The President’s letter about Rome[191] has delighted us.  A letter worth writing and reading!  We read it first in the Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris), and the amusing thing was that where he speaks of the ‘hostile influences’ (of the cardinals) they had misprinted it ‘orribili influenze,’ which must have turned still colder the blood in the veins of Absolutist readers.  The misprint was not corrected until long after—­more than a week, I think.  The Pope is just a pope; and, since you give George Sand credit for having known it, I am the more vexed that Blackwood (under ‘orribili influenze’) did not publish the poem I wrote two years ago,[192] in the full glare and burning of the Pope-enthusiasm, which Robert and I never caught for a moment.  Then, I might have passed a little for a prophetess as well as George Sand!  Only, to confess a truth, the same poem would have proved how fairly I was taken in by our Tuscan Grand Duke.  Oh, the traitor!

I saw the ’Ambarvalia’[193] reviewed somewhere—­I fancy in the ’Spectator ’—­and was not much struck by the extracts.  They may, however, have been selected without much discrimination, and probably were.  I am very glad that you like the gipsy carol in dear Mr. Kenyon’s volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine.  There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says them:  one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects!  How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more.  I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars.  Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, of course.  We set off at eight in the morning and returned at six P.M., after dining on the mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, and burnt Brick-colour for all bad effect.  No horse or ass, untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was one could not help the natural thrill.  No road except the bed of exhausted torrents above