For the rest he reads French and German, and we shall have to begin Latin in another year I suppose.  Do you advise that, you, Mr. Ruskin?  He has not given up the drawing neither.  Ah! but there is a weight beyond the post, whatever your goodness may bear, and I must leave a little space for Robert.

May God bless you, my dear friend!  Dare I say it? it came.

Affectionately yours always,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

Robert Browning to Mr. Ruskin

I am to say something, dear Ruskin; it shall be only the best of wishes for this and all other years; go on again like the noble and dear man you are to us all, and especially to us two out of them all.  Whenever I chance on an extract, a report, it lights up the dull newspaper stuff wrapt round it and makes me glad at heart and clearer in head.  We, for our part, have just sent off a corrected ‘Aurora Leigh,’ which is the better for a deal of pains, we hope, and my wife deserves.  There will be a portrait from a photograph done at Havre without retouching—­good, I think.  Truest love to you and yours—­your father and mother.  Do help us by a word every now and then.

Affectionately yours,
R.B.

* * * * *

To Miss I. Blagden

[Rome]:  43 Bocca di Leone:  January 7 [1859].

My dearest Isa,—­Your letter seemed long in coming, as this will seem to you, I fear.  I ought to have answered mine at once, and put off doing so from reason to reason, and from day to day.  Very busy I have been, sending off seven of the nine books of ’Aurora,’[61] having dizzied myself with the ‘ifs’ and ‘ands,’ and done some little good I hope at much cost....

As to the Roman climate, we have had some beautiful weather, but Robert was calling his gods to witness (the goddess Tussis among them) that he never felt it so cold in Florence—­never.  Fountains frozen, Isa, and the tramontana tremendous.  But it can’t last—­that’s the comfort at Rome; and meantime we are housed exquisitely in our lion’s mouth; the new portiere and universal carpeting keeping it snugger than ever, and the sun over-streaming us through six windows.  I have just been saying that whenever I come to Rome I shall choose to come here.  The only fault is, the height and the smallness of the rooms; and, in spite of the last, we have managed to have and hold twenty people and upwards through a serata.  Peni has had a bad cold, from over-staying the time on the Pincio one afternoon, and I have kept him in the house these ten days.  Such things one may do by one’s lion-cubs; but the lions are harder to deal with, and Robert caught cold two or three days ago; in spite of which he chose to get up at six every morning as usual and go out to walk with Mr. Eckley.  Only by miracle and nux is he much better to-day.  I thought he was going to have a furious grippe, as last year and the year before.