Dearest friend, I don’t know how to tell you of our fullness of sympathy in your late trials.[41] From a word which reached us from England the other day, there will be, I do trust, some effectual arrangement to relieve your friends from their anxieties about you.  Then, there should be an increase of the Government pension by another hundred, that is certain; only the ‘should be’ lies so far out of sight in the ideal, that nobody in his senses should calculate on its occurrence.  As to Law, it’s different from Right—­particularly in England perhaps—­and appeals to Law are disastrous when they cannot be counted on as victorious, always and certainly.  Therefore you may be wise in abstaining; you have considered sufficiently, of course.  I only hope you are not trammelled in any degree by motives of delicacy which would be preposterous under the actual circumstances.  You meantime are as nobly laborious as ever.  We have caught hold of fragments in the newspapers from your ‘Commonplace Book,’ which made us wish for more; and Mr. Kenyon told me of a kind mention of Robert which was very pleasant to me.

How will it be?  Shall you be likely to come to Italy before we set out to the north—­that is, before the middle of May—­or shall we cross on the road, like our letters, or shall we catch you in London, or in Paris at least?  Oh, you won’t miss the Exhibition in Paris.  That seems certain.

I know Florence Nightingale slightly.  She came to see me when we were in London last; and I remember her face and her graceful manner, and the flowers she sent me after afterwards.  I honor her from my heart.  She is an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman’s duty where many men have failed.

At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the ’woman’s question,’ in this step of hers.  If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues!  Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it’s strictly the woman’s part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine dignities.  Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint, calling them ‘angelic she’s,’ whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity; than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the impudence of the very same women and stop there.  I can’t see on what ground you think you see here the least gain to the ‘woman’s question,’ so called.  It’s rather the contrary, to my mind, and, any way, the women of England must give the precedence to the soeurs de charite, who have magnificently won it in all matters of this kind.  For my own part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge to you that I do not consider the best use to which