on it.  I believe that the body of flesh is a mere husk which drops off at death, while the spiritual body (see St. Paul) emerges in glorious resurrection at once.  Swedenborg says, some persons do not immediately realise that they have passed death, and this seems to me highly probable.  It is curious that Maurice, Mr. Kingsley’s friend, about whom so much lately has been written and quarrelled (and who has made certain great mistakes, I think), takes this precise view of the resurrection, with an apparent unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has stated upon the subject, and that, I, too, long before I knew Swedenborg, or heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusions.  I wonder if Mr. Kingsley agrees with us.  I dare say he does, upon the whole—­for the ordinary doctrine seems to me as little taught by Scripture as it can be reconciled with philosophical probabilities.  I believe in an active, human life, beyond death as before it, an uninterrupted human life.  I believe in no waiting in the grave, and in no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapour.  But you’ll be tired with ‘what I believe.’

I have been to the other side of Florence to call on Mrs. Trollope, on purpose that I might talk to her of you, but she was not at home, though she has returned from the Baths of Lucca.  From what I hear, she appears to be well, and has recommenced her ‘public mornings,’ which we shrink away from.  She ‘receives’ every Saturday morning in the most heterogeneous way possible.  It must be amusing to anybody not overwhelmed by it, and people say that she snatches up ‘characters’ for her ‘so many volumes a year’ out of the diversities of masks presented to her on these occasions.  Oh, our Florence!  In vain do I cry out for ‘Atherton.’  The most active circulating library ‘hasn’t got it yet,’ they say.  I must still wait.  Meanwhile, of course, I am delighted with all your successes, and your books won’t spoil by keeping like certain other books.  So I may wait.

How young children unfold like flowers, and how pleasant it is to watch them!  I congratulate you upon yours—­your baby-girl must be a dear forward little thing.  But I wish I could show you my Penini, with his drooping golden ringlets and seraphic smile, and his talk about angels—­you would like him, I know.  Your girl-baby has avenged my name for me, and now, if you heard my Penini say in the midst of a coaxing fit—­’O, my sweetest little mama, my darling, dearlest, little Ba,’ you would admit that ‘Ba’ must have a music in it, to my ears at least.  The love of two generations is poured out to me in that name—­and the stream seems to run (in one instance) when alas! the fountain is dry.  I do not refer to the dead who live still.