Even Florence has very few English.  A crisis is looked for everywhere.  Prices there are rising fast; but one is prepared to pay more for liberty.  Carriages are dearer than in Paris by our new tariff, which is an item important to me.  We left Mr. Landor in great comfort.  I went to see his apartment before it was furnished.  Rooms small, but with a look out into a little garden; quiet and cheerful; and he doesn’t mind a situation rather out of the way.  He pays four pound ten (English) the month.  Wilson has thirty pounds a year for taking care of him, which sounds a good deal; but it is a difficult position.  He has excellent, generous, affectionate impulses, but the impulses of the tiger every now and then.  Nothing coheres in him, either in his opinions, or I fear, affections.  It isn’t age; he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe.  Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt.  Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary.  At present Landor is very fond of him; but I am quite prepared for his turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so devoted for years and years.  Only one isn’t kind for what one gets by it, or there wouldn’t be much kindness in this world.

I keep well; and of course, at Rome there is more chance for me than there was in Florence; but I hated to inflict an unpopular journey, of which the advantage was solely mine.  Poor Peni said that if he had to leave his Florence he would rather go to Paris than to Rome.  I dare say he would.  Then his Florentines frightened him with ideas of the awful massacre we were to be subjected to here.  The pony travelled like a glorified Houyhnhnm and we have brought a second male servant to take care of him.  It was an economy; for the wages of Rome are inordinate.  Pen’s tender love to his nonno and you with that of

Your ever affectionate sister,
BA.

* * * * *

To Miss E.F.  Haworth

[Rome]:  28 Via Tritone:  Friday [winter 1859].

My dearest Fanny,—­Set me down as a wretch, but hear me.  I have been ill again, in the first place; then as weak as a rag in consequence, and then with business accumulated on impotent hands; proofs to see to, and the like.  You may have heard in the buzz of newspapers of certain presentation swords, subscribed for by twenty thousand Romans, at a franc each, and presented in homage and gratitude to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel.  Castellani[72] of course was the artist, and the whole business had to be huddled up at the end, because of his Holiness denouncing all such givers of gifts as traitors to the See.  So just as the swords had to be packed up and disappear, some one came with a shut carriage to take me for a sight of these most exquisite works of art.  It was five o’clock in the evening and raining,