Often we have talked and thought of you since the last time we saw you, and, before your letter came, we had ventured to put on the list of expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr. Ruskin.  For the rest, there will be some bitter things too.  I do not miss them generally in England, and among them this time will be an empty place where I used always to find a tender and too indulgent friend.

You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours.  The peril would be mine in that case.  But among the advantages of our Florence—­the art, the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses, and don’t let me forget the Arno and mountains at sunset time—­is that of an all but infallible post office.  One loses letters at Rome.  Here, I think, we have lost one in the course of eight years, and for that loss I hold my correspondent to blame.

How good you are to me!  How kind!  The soul of a cynic, at its third stage of purification, might feel the value of ‘Gold’ laid on the binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin.  Much more I, who am apt to get too near that ugly ‘sty of Epicurus’ sometimes!  Indeed you have gratified me deeply.  There was ‘once on a time,’ as is said in the fairy tales, a word dropped by you in one of your books, which I picked up and wore for a crown.  Your words of goodwill are of great price to me always, and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford’s latest kindnesses to me was copying out and sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings.  She knew well—­she who knew me—­the value it would have for me, and the courage it would give me for any future work.

With my husband’s cordial regards,

I remain most truly yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Our American friends, who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the hope of trying fate again in another visit to you.  Thank you!  Also thank you for your inquiry about my health.  I have had a rather bad attack on my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than usual here, but now I am very well again—­for me.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

Florence:  April 20, 1855.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again, and prosperous—­thanking you for wishing to know.  People look at me and laugh, because it’s a clear case of bulbous root with me—­let me pass (being humble) for the onion.  I was looking miserable in February, and really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my perch again—­nay, even out of my cage door.  The weather is divine.  One feels in one’s self why the trees are green.  I go out, walk out, have recovered flesh and fire—­my very hair curls differently. ‘Is I, I?’