invasions, &c., &c., but he wants a shield to guard his sword-arm.  The statesmanship of England pines for new blood, for ideas of the epoch, and the Russell old-fogyism will not do any more at all.  These old bottles won’t hold the new wine.  People are positively calling on the Muse and William Pitt.  It’s religion to hate France, and to set up a ‘Boney’ as a ‘raw head and bloody bones’ sort of scarecrow.  But it won’t do.  As the Revolutionists say, ‘E troppo tardi.’

I am not, however, in furies all day, dearest Mrs. Martin. (I answer satisfactorily your question whether I am ‘ever calm.’) The newspapers from various parts of Italy thunder down on us here, not to speak of ‘Galignanis’ and ‘Saturday Reviews.’  See how calm-blooded I must be to bear the ‘Saturday Review.’ (I consider it a curiosity in vice, certainly.) Then we have books from the subscription library in Florence, and sights of the ‘Cornhill,’ and political pamphlets by the book-post; nay, even the ‘Spiritual Magazine,’ sent by Chapman and Hall, in the last number of which that clever and brave William Howitt (who, like a man, is foolish sometimes) suggests gravely in an article that I have lately been ‘biologised by infernal spirits,’ in order to the production of certain bad works in the service of ‘Moloch,’ meaning, of course, L.N.  Oh! and did anyone tell you how Harriet Martineau, in her political letters to America, set me down with her air of serene superiority?  But such things never chafe me—­never.  They don’t even quicken my pulsation.  And the place we are passing the summer in is very calm—­a great lonely villa, in the midst of purple hills and vineyards, olive-trees and fig-trees like forest-trees; a deep soothing silence.  A mile off we have friends, and my dear friend Miss Blagden is in a villa half a mile off.  This for the summer.  Also, we brought with us from Florence and dropped in a villino not far, our friend Mr. Landor (Walter Savage), who is under Robert’s guardianship, having quarrelled with everybody in and out of England.  I call him our adopted son. (You did not know I had a son of eighty-six and more.) Wilson lives with him, and Robert receives from his family in England means for his support.  But really the office is hard, and I tell Robert that he must be prepared for the consequences:  an outbreak and a printed statement that he (Robert), instigated by his wicked wife, had attempted to poison him (Landor) slowly.  Such an extraordinary union of great literary gifts and incapacity of will has seldom surprised the world.  Of course he does not live with us, you know, either here or in Florence, but my husband manages every detail of his life, and both the responsibility and trouble are considerable.  Still he is a great writer.  We owe him some gratitude therefore.

Penini has his pony here, and rides with his father.  We have had the coolest summer I ever remember in Italy.  I could have been very happy.  But God, who ‘tempers the wind,’ finds it necessary for the welfare of some of us to temper the sunshine also....