The house in the Rue de Grenelle, however, did not prove a success, in spite of the consolations of the yellow satin, and after six weeks of discomfort and house-hunting the Brownings moved to 3 Rue de Colisee, which became their home for the next eight months.  It was a period, first of illness caused by the unsuitable rooms, and then of hard work for Mrs. Browning, who was engaged in completing ‘Aurora Leigh,’ while her husband was less profitably employed in the attempt to recast ‘Sordello’ into a more intelligible form.  No such incident as the visits to George Sand marked this stay in Paris, and politics were in a very much less exciting state.  The Crimean war was just coming to a close, and public opinion in England was far from satisfied with the conduct of its ally; but on the whole the times were uneventful.

The first letter from Paris has, however, a special interest as containing a very full estimate of the character and genius of Mrs. Browning’s dear friend, Miss Mitford.  It is addressed to Mr. Ruskin, who had been unceasingly attentive and helpful to Miss Mitford during her declining days.

* * * * *

To Mr. Ruskin

Paris, 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain: 
November 5, [1855].

My dear Mr. Ruskin,—­I thank you from my heart for your more than interesting letter.  You have helped me to see that dear friend of ours, as without you I could not have seen her, in those last affecting days of illness, by the window not only of the house in Berkshire, but of the house of the body and of the material world—­an open window through which the light shone, thank God.  It would be a comfort to me now if I had had the privilege of giving her a very very little of the great pleasure you certainly gave her (for I know how she enjoyed your visit—­she wrote and told me), but I must be satisfied with the thought left to me, that now she regrets nothing, not even great pleasures.

I agree with you in much if not in everything you have written of her.  It was a great, warm, outflowing heart, and the head was worthy of the heart.  People have observed that she resembled Coleridge in her granite forehead—­something, too, in the lower part of the face—­however unlike Coleridge in mental characteristics, in his tendency to abstract speculation, or indeed his ideality.  There might have been, as you suggest, a somewhat different development elsewhere than in Berkshire—­not very different, though—­souls don’t grow out of the ground.

I agree quite with you that she was stronger and wider in her conversation and letters than in her books.  Oh, I have said so a hundred times.  The heat of human sympathy seemed to bring out her powerful vitality, rustling all over with laces and flowers.  She seemed to think and speak stronger holding a hand—­not that she required help or borrowed a word, but that the human magnetism acted on her nature, as it does upon men born to speak.  Perhaps if she had been a man with a man’s opportunities, she would have spoken rather than written a reputation.  Who can say?  She hated the act of composition.  Did you hear that from her ever?