Are you not happy—­you—­in this fast union between England and France?  Some of our English friends, coming to Italy through France, say that the general feeling towards England, and the affectionate greetings and sympathies lavished upon them as Englishmen by the French everywhere, are quite strange and touching.  ‘In two or three years,’ said a Frenchman on a railroad, ’French and English, we shall make only one nation.’  Are you very curious about the subject of gossip just now between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon?  We hear from somebody in Paris, whose metier it is to know everything, that it refers to the readjustment of affairs in Italy.  May God grant it!  The Italians have been hanging their whole hope’s weight upon Louis Napoleon ever since he came to power, and if he does now what he can for them I shall be proud of my protege—­oh, and so glad!  Robert and I clapped our hands yesterday when we heard this; we couldn’t refrain, though our informant was reactionary and in a deep state of conservative melancholy.  ’Awful things were to be expected about Italy,’ quotha!

Now do be good, and write and tell me what your plans are for the winter.  We shall remain here till May, and then, if God pleases, go north—­to Paris and London.  Robert and I are at work on our books.  I have taken to ass’s milk to counteract the tramontana, and he is in the twenty-first and I in the twenty-second volume of Alexandre Dumas’s ‘Memoirs.’  The book is un peu hasarde occasionally, as might be expected, but extremely interesting, and I really must recommend it to your attention for the winter if you don’t know it already.

We have seen a good deal of Mrs. Sartoris lately on her way to Rome (Adelaide Kemble)—­eloquent in talk and song, a most brilliant woman, and noble.  She must be saddened since then, poor thing, by her father’s death.  Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau has seceded again from her atheism?  We heard so the other day.  Dearest Mrs. Martin, do write to me; and do, both of you, remember me, and think of both of us kindly.  With Robert’s true regards,

I am your as ever affectionate
BA.

Tell me dear Mr. Martin’s mind upon politics—­in the Austrian and Prussian question, for instance.  We have no fears, in spite of Dr. Cumming and the prophets generally, of ultimate results.

* * * * *

To Miss Mitford

Florence:  December 11, 1854.

I should have written long ago, my dearest Miss Mitford, to try to say half the pleasure and gratitude your letter made for me, but I have been worried and anxious about the illnesses, not exactly in my family but nearly as touching to me, and hanging upon posts from England in a painful way inevitable to these great distances....