That’s what my Ninian would have said.  I don’t like to see noble Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic motives—­not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?

I must tell you that Mrs. Jameson, who is staying in this house, read your book in England and mentioned it to me as a good book, ’very gracefully written,’ before I read it, quite irrespectively, too, of my dedication, which was absent from the copy she saw at Brighton.  It was mentioned as one of the novels which had pleased her most lately.

I shall like to show you my child, as you like children, and as I am vain—­oh, past endurance vain, about him.  You won’t understand a word he says, though, for he speaks three languages at once, and most of the syllables of each wrong side foremost.

No, don’t call me a Bonapartist.  I am not a Bonapartist indeed.  But I am a Democrat and singularly (in these days) consequent about universal suffrage.  Also, facts in England have been much mis-stated; but there’s no room for politics to-day.

When I thank you, remember that my husband thanks you.  We both hope to see you before this month shall be quite at an end, and then you will know me better, I hope; and though I shall lose a great deal by your knowing me, of course, yet you won’t, after that, make such mistakes as you ‘confess’ in this note which I have just read over again.  Did I think you ‘sentimental’?  Won’t you rather think me sentimental to-day?  Through it all,

Your affectionate
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:  June 16, [1852].

My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your affectionate words to me and mine, which always, from you, sink deeply.  It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you loved me still a little.  May God bless you both!  And may we meet again and again in Paris and elsewhere; in London this summer to begin with!  As the Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure:  ’Sarebbe una benedizione.’

We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable in order to set out.  Mrs. Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days, writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to imagine the state of the skies and the atmosphere; yet, even in Paris, we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers and sunshine—­a crisis, however, which does not call for fires, nor inflict much harm on me.  It was the thunder, we think, that upset the summer.