for so I shall not lose your letter.  I have been between heaven and earth since our arrival at Venice.  The heaven of it is ineffable.  Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place.  The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas—­I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world.  Do you know, when I came first I felt as if I never could go away.  But now comes the earth side.  Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable, and nervous, and unable to eat or sleep; and poor Wilson, still worse, in a miserable condition of continual sickness and headache.  Alas for these mortal Venices—­so exquisite and so bilious!  Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going off on Friday.  For myself, it does not affect me at all.  I like these moist, soft, relaxing climates; even the scirocco doesn’t touch me much.  And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything.

No, indeed and indeed, we are not going to England for the sake of the Exposition.  How could you fancy such a thing, even once.  In any case we shall not reach London till late, and if by any arrangement I could see my sister Arabel in France or on the coast of England, we would persuade Robert’s family to meet us there, and not see London at all.  Ah, if you knew how abhorrent the thought of England is to me!  Well, we must not talk of it.  My eyes shut suddenly when my thoughts go that way.

Tell me exactly how you are.  I heartily rejoice that you have decided at last about the other house, so as to avoid the danger of another autumn and winter in the damp.  Do you write still for Mr. Chorley’s periodical, and how does it go on?  Here in Italy the fame of it does not penetrate.  As for Venice, you can’t get even a ‘Times,’ much less an ‘Athenaeum.’  We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (the whole box on the ground tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence English.  Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French papers.  Can you fancy me so?

You will receive a copy of my new poem, ‘Casa Guidi Windows,’ soon after this note.  I have asked Sarianna Browning to see that you receive it safely.  I don’t give away copies (having none to give away, according to booksellers’ terms), but I can’t let you receive my little book from another hand than the writer’s.  Tell me how you like the poem—­honestly, truly—­which numbers of people will be sure to dislike profoundly and angrily, perhaps.  We think of going to Recoaro because Mr. Chorley praised it to us years ago.  Tell him so if you write.

Here are a heap of words tossed down upon paper.  I can’t put the stops even.  Do write about yourself, not waiting for the book.