I meant to cross your second letter, and so, my very dear friend, you are a second time a prophetess as to my intentions, while I am still more grateful than I could have been with the literal fulfilment.  Delightful it is to hear from you—­do always write when you can.  And though this second letter speaks of your having been unwell, still I shall continue to flatter myself that upon the whole ‘the better part prevails,’ and that if the rains don’t wash you away this winter, I may have leave to think of you as strengthening and to strengthen still.  Meanwhile you certainly, as you say, have roots to your feet.  Never was anyone so pure as you from the drop of gypsey blood which tingles in my veins and my husband’s, and gives us every now and then a fever for roaming, strong enough to carry us to Mount Caucasus if it were not for the healthy state of depletion observable in the purse.  I get fond of places, so does he.  We both of us grew rather pathetical on leaving our Sienese villa, and shrank from parting with the pig.  But setting out on one’s travels has a great charm; oh, I should like to be able to pay our way down the Nile, and into Greece, and into Germany, and into Spain!  Every now and then we take out the road-books, calculate the expenses, and groan in the spirit when it’s proved for the hundredth time that we can’t do it.  One must have a home, you see, to keep one’s books in and one’s spring-sofas in; but the charm of a home is a home to come back to.  Do you understand?  No, not you!  You have as much comprehension of the pleasure of ‘that sort of thing’ as in the peculiar taste of the three ladies who hung themselves in a French balloon the other day, operatically nude, in order, I conjecture, to the ultimate perfection of French delicacy in morals and manners....

I long to see your papers, and dare say they are charming.  At the same time, just because they are sure to be charming (and notwithstanding their kindness to me, notwithstanding that I live in a glass house myself, warmed by such rare stoves!) I am a little in fear that your generosity and excess of kindness may run the risk of lowering the ideal of poetry in England by lifting above the mark the names of some poetasters.  Do you know, you take up your heart sometimes by mistake, to admire with, when you ought to use it only to love with? and this is apt to be dangerous, with your reputation and authority in matters of literature.  See how impertinent I am!  But we should all take care to teach the world that poetry is a divine thing, should we not? that is, not mere verse-making, though the verses be pretty in their way.  Rather perish every verse I ever wrote, for one, than help to drag down an inch that standard of poetry which, for the sake of humanity as well as literature, should be kept high.  As for simplicity and clearness, did I ever deny that they were excellent qualities?  Never, surely.  Only, they will not make