are going into a second edition, Chapman says, and ‘Aurora Leigh’ into a fifth.  Also Chapman junior, who has come out here to see after Lever, smoothes me down a little about Robert, and says that the sale is bettering itself, and that a new edition of the ‘Poems’ will soon be wanted.  I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in ‘Bentley’s Magazine.’  Abuse of the ‘Congress Poems,’ of course.  Then a side stroke at ‘Aurora Leigh,’ which was original, of course, because it’s my way to stand alone and attack people; but the principal merit of which otherwise was the suggestion of ‘Lucille’ (Lytton’s new poem)—­’Lucille,’ says the critic, being superior in holiness and virtue and that sort of thing to ‘Aurora’!  Of course.

They subscribed in England five thousand pounds for Tom Sayers.  There’s the advance of civilisation.  Napoleon has gone to Baden to arrange the world a little more comfortably, I hope.

Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans have been here, and are coming back to settle into our congenial bosom.  I admire her books so much, that certainly I shall not refuse to receive her, though she is not a medium.  Sarianna!

Your ever affectionate sister.

* * * * *

The programme of the previous year was repeated in 1860.  Returning from Rome to Florence at the beginning of June, the Brownings in July went to Siena to avoid the extreme heat of the summer at Florence, staying as before at the Villa Alberti.  Their visit to Siena was, however, rather shorter than the previous one, lasting only till September.

There is no doubt that Mrs. Browning, during all this time, was losing ground in point of health; and she now received another severe blow in the news of the serious illness of her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook).  The anxiety lasted for several months, and ended with the death of Mrs. Cook in the following winter.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

Villa Alberti, Siena:  August 21, [1860].

I thank you, my dearest friend, from my heart for your letter, and the ray of sunshine it brought with it.  Do you know I was childish enough to kiss it as if it knew what it did.  I wish I could kiss you.  Yes, I have been very unhappy, not giving way on the whole, going about my work as usual, but with a sense of a black veil between me and whatever I did, sometimes feeling incapable of crawling down to sit on the cushion under my own fig-tree for an hour’s vision of this beautiful country—­sometimes in ‘des transes mortelles’ of fear.

But we must not be atheists, as a friend said to me the other day.  I hope I do not live quite as if I were.  But it was a great shock from the beginning.  Henrietta always seemed so strong that I never feared that way.