is it not?  Here is my comfort.  Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us.  We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted.  Here’s an inferiority proved.  Let us understand it and remedy it, and not talk, talk, any more.

[Part of this letter has been cut out]

We heard yesterday from the editor of the ‘Examiner,’ Mr. Forster, who expects some terrible consequence of present circumstances in England, as far as I can understand.  The alliance with France is full of consolation.  There seems to be a real heart-union between the peoples.  What a grand thing the Napoleon loan is!  It has struck the English with admiration.

I heard, too, among other English news, that Walter Savage Landor, who has just kept his eightieth birthday, and is as young and impetuous as ever, has caught the whooping cough by way of an illustrative accident.  Kinglake (’E[=o]then’) came home from the Crimea (where he went out and fought as an amateur) with fever, which has left one lung diseased.  He is better, however....

Dearest Mrs. Martin, dearest friends, be both of you well and strong.  Shall we not meet in Paris this early summer?

May God bless you!  Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

Florence:  February 24, 1855.

The devil (say charitable souls) is not as bad as he is painted, and even I, dearest Mona Nina, am better than I seem.  In the first place, let me make haste to say that I never received the letter you sent me to Rome with the information of your family affliction, and that, if I had, it could never have remained an unnoticed letter.  I am not so untender, so unsympathising, not so brutal—­let us speak out.  I lost several letters in Rome, besides a good deal of illusion.  I did not like Rome, I think I confessed to you.  In the second place, when your last letter reached me—­I mean the letter in which you told me to write to you directly—­I would have written directly, but was so very unwell that you would not have wished me even to try if, absent in the flesh, you had been present in spirit.  I have had a severe attack on the chest—­the worst I ever had in Italy—­the consequence of exceptionally severe weather—­bitter wind and frost together—­which quite broke me up with cough and fever at night.  Now I am well again, only of course much weakened, and grown thin.  I mean to get fat again upon cod’s liver oil, in order to appear in England with some degree of decency.  You know I’m a lineal descendant of the White Cat, and have seven lives accordingly.  Also I have a trick of falling from six-storey windows upon my feet, in the manner of the traditions of my race.  Not only I die hard, but I can hardly die.  ‘Half of it would kill me,’ said an admiring friend the other day.  ‘What strength you must have!’ A questionable advantage, except that I have also—­a Robert, and a Penini!