For the rest, being turned out of the old world, I fall on my feet in the new world, where people have been generous, and even publishers turned liberal.  Think of my having an offer (on the ground of that book) from a periodical in New York of a hundred dollars for every single poem, though as short as a sonnet—­that is, for its merely passing through their pages on the road to the publisher’s proper.  Oh, I shall cry aloud and boast, since people choose to abuse me.  Did you see how I was treated in ‘Blackwood’?  In fact, you and all women, though you hated me, should be vexed on your own accounts.  As for me, it’s only what I expected, and I have had that deep satisfaction of ’speaking though I died for it,’ which we are all apt to aspire to now and then.  Do you know I was half inclined to send my little book to Mr. Cobden, and then I drew back into my shell, with native snail-shyness.

We remain here till the end of May, when we remove back to Florence.  Meanwhile I am in great anxiety about Sicily.  Garibaldi’s hardy enterprise may be followed by difficult complications.

Let us talk away from politics, which set my heart beating uncomfortably, and don’t particularly amuse you....

Have you read the ‘Mill on the Floss,’ and what of it?  The author is here, they say, with her elective affinity, and is seen on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing.  Always together.  They are said to visit nobody, and to be beheld only at unawares.  Theodore Parker removed to Florence in an extremity of ill-health, and is dead there.  I feel very sorry.  There was something high and noble about the man—­though he was not deep in proportion.  Hatty Hosmer has arrived in America, and found her father alive and better, but threatened with another attack which must be final.  Gibson came to us yesterday, and we agreed that we never found him so interesting.  I grieve to hear that Mr. Page’s pictures (another Venus and a Moses) have been rejected at your Academy.

Robert deserves no reproaches, for he has been writing a good deal this winter—­working at a long poem[88] which I have not seen a line of, and producing short lyrics which I have seen, and may declare worthy of him.  For me, if I have attained anything of force and freedom by living near the oak, the better for me.  But I hope you don’t think that I mimic [him, or] lose my individuality. [Penini] sends his love with Robert’s. [He ri]des his pony and learns his Latin and looks as pretty as ever—­to my way of [thinking].  If you don’t write directly, address to Florence.

We have another thick Indian letter for you, but Robert is afraid of sending it till you give us a safe address.

* * * * *

To Miss I. Blagden

[Rome:  about May 1860.]

[The beginning of this letter is wanting]

When the English were raging about Savoy, I heard a word or two from Pantaleone which convinced me that the Imperial wickedness did not strike him as the sin against the Holy Ghost precisely.  In fact, I doubt much that he (an intimate friend of Massimo d’ Azeglio) knew all about it before the war.