and I assure you he is looking in the full bloom of health, and we have been congratulated on all sides on his appearance and growth since we returned to Florence.  Riding so much has agreed well with him; and the general results of the Roman campaign cannot be said to be otherwise than favourable.  Set down as much for Robert.  Everybody exclaims at his stoutness.  In fact, never since I have known him has he condescended to put on such an air of robustness, there’s no other word for it.  Shall we give the glory to Rome, or to nux, to which he is constant.  For two years and a half he has had recourse to no other remedy, and it has not yet failed to produce its effect.  How do you unbelievers account for that?  At the same time, I never would think of using it in any active or inflammatory malady, and where a sudden revolution or scosso is required from the remedial agent.

We find poor Mr. Landor tolerably amenable to Wilson, and well in health, though he can’t live more than three months, he says, and except when Robert keeps him soothed by quoting his own works to him, considers himself in a very wretched condition, which is a sort of satisfaction too.  He is a man of great genius, and we owe him every attention on that ground.  Otherwise I confess to you he is to me eminently unsympathetic....

If ——­ ‘turns Catholic,’ as you say, on the ground of the organisation of certain institutions, it will be a proof of very peculiar ignorance.  This power of organisation is French, and not Catholic.  You look for it in vain in Rome, for instance, except where the organisation comes from France.  The soeurs de charite, who are of all Catholic nations, are organised entirely by the French.  The institutions here are branch institutions.  In Rome the tendency of everything is to confusion and ‘individuality’ with separate pockets.  Lamoriciere was in despair at it all, and even now people talk of his resigning, though he gave a dinner the other day to his staff, with the toast of ‘Henri Cinq.’

Individuality is an excellent thing in its place, and an infamous thing out of it.  In England we have some very successful efforts at organisation—­the post office, which is nearly perfect, and society, in which the demarcation between class and class is much too perfect to be humane.  In other respects we are apt to fail.

We do not fail, however, in organisation only with regard to these charitable institutions.  We are very hard and unsympathetic in them.  A distinguished woman has been here lately—­a Miss Cobbe (a fellow-worker with Miss Carpenter)—­who, having overworked herself, was forced by her physician to come here for three months and rest, under dire penalties.  She went to Isa Blagden’s, and returned to England and her work just now.  She is very acute, and so perfectly without Continental prejudices, that she didn’t pretend to much interest even in our Italian movement, having her heart in England and with the poor.  But she was much struck, not merely with the order of foreign institutions, but with their superior tenderness and sympathy.  The account she gave of the English workhouses and hospitals was very sad, very cruel, corresponding, in fact, to what I have heard from other quarters.