gratification in respect to his play and yet prepares for more plays, more wrestlings in the same dust.  Well, I can’t make it out.  A man of his sensitiveness to choose to appeal to the coarsest side of the public—­which, whatever you dramatists may say, you all certainly do—­is incomprehensible to me.  Then I cannot help thinking that he might achieve other sorts of successes more easily and surely.  Your criticism is very just.  But I like his ‘Music and Manners in Germany’ better than anything he has done.  I believe I always did like it best, and since coming to Florence I have heard cultivated Americans speak of it with enthusiasm, yes, with enthusiasm.  ‘Pomfret’ they would scarcely believe to be by the same author.  I agree with you, but it is a pity indeed for him to tie himself to the wheels of the ‘Athenaeum,’ to approfondir the ruts; what other end?  And, by the way, the ‘Athenaeum,’ since Mr. Dilke left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter and flatter.  Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in contempt.  Now it is all different.  We have not even ‘public virtue’ to fasten our admiration to.  You will be sure to think I am vexed at the article on my husband’s new poem.[201] Why, certainly I am vexed!  Who would not be vexed with such misunderstanding and mistaking.  Dear Mr. Chorley writes a letter to appreciate most generously:  so you see how little power he has in the paper to insert an opinion, or stop an injustice.  On the same day came out a burning panegyric of six columns in the ‘Examiner,’ a curious cross-fire.  If you read the little book (I wish I could send you a copy, but Chapman & Hall have not offered us copies, and you will catch sight of it somewhere), I hope you will like things in it at least.  It seems to me full of power.  Two hundred copies went off in the first fortnight, which is a good beginning in these days.  So I am to confess to a satisfaction in the American piracies.  Well, I confess, then.  Only it is rather a complex smile with which one hears:  ’Sir or Madam, we are selling your book at half price, as well printed as in England.’  ’Those apples we stole from your garden, we sell at a halfpenny, instead of a penny as you do; they are much appreciated.’  Very gratifying indeed.  It’s worth while to rob us, that’s plain, and there’s something magnificent in supplying a distant market with apples out of one’s garden.  Still the smile is complex in its character, and the morality—­simple, that’s all I meant to say.  A letter from Henrietta and her husband, glowing with happiness; it makes me happy.  She says, ’I wonder if I shall be as happy as you, Ba.’  God grant it.  It was signified to her that she should at once give up her engagement of five years, or leave the house.  She married directly.  I do not understand how it could be otherwise, indeed.  My brothers have been kind and affectionate, I am glad to say; in her case, poor dearest papa does injustice chiefly to his own nature, by these severities, hard as they seem.  Write soon and talk of yourself to