by those blood colours of Socialistic views, which would have drawn the wolves on her, with a still more howling enmity, both in England and America.  Therefore it was better for her to go.  Only God and a few friends can be expected to distinguish between the pure personality of a woman and her professed opinions.  She was chiefly known in America, I believe, by oral lectures and a connection with the newspaper press, neither of them happy means of publicity.  Was she happy in anything, I wonder?  She told me that she never was.  May God have made her happy in her death!

Such gloom she had in leaving Italy!  So full she was of sad presentiment!  Do you know she gave a Bible as a parting gift from her child to ours, writing in it ’In memory of Angelo Eugene Ossoli’—­a strange, prophetical expression?  That last evening a prophecy was talked of jestingly—­an old prophecy made to poor Marquis Ossoli, ’that he should shun the sea, for that it would be fatal to him.’  I remember how she turned to me smiling and said, ’Our ship is called the “Elizabeth,” and I accept the omen.’

Now I am making you almost dull perhaps, and myself certainly duller.  Rather let me tell you, dearest Miss Mitford, how delightedly I look forward to reading whatever you have written or shall write.  You write ‘as well as twenty years ago’!  Why, I should think so, indeed.  Don’t I know what your letters are?  Haven’t I had faith in you always?  Haven’t I, in fact, teased you half to death in proof of it?  I, who was a sort of Brutus, and oughtn’t to have done it, you hinted.  Moreover, Robert is a great admirer of yours, as I must have told you before, and has the pretension (unjustly though, as I tell him) to place you still higher among writers than I do, so that we are two in expectancy here.  May Mr. Chorley’s periodical live a thousand years!

As my ‘Seagull’ won’t, but you will find it in my new edition, and the ‘Doves’ and everything else worth a straw of my writing.  Here’s a fact which you must try to settle with your theories of simplicity and popularity:  None of these simple poems of mine have been favorites with general readers.  The unintelligible ones are always preferred, I observe, by extracters, compilers, and ladies and gentlemen who write to tell me that I’m a muse.  The very Corn Law Leaguers in the North used to leave your ‘Seagulls’ to fly where they could, and clap hands over mysteries of iniquity.  Dearest Miss Mitford—­for the rest, don’t mistake what I write to you sometimes—­don’t fancy that I undervalue simplicity and think nothing of legitimate fame—­I only mean to say that the vogue which begins with the masses generally comes to nought (Beranger is an exceptional case, from the form of his poems, obviously), while the appreciation beginning with the few always ends with the masses.  Wasn’t Wordsworth, for instance, both simple and unpopular, when he was most divine?  To go to the great from