Mr. Kenyon has come back, and most other people are gone away; but he is worth more than most other people, so the advantage remains to the scale.  I am delighted that you should have your dear friend Mr. Harness with you, and, for my own part, I do feel grateful to him for the good he has evidently done you.  Oh, continue to be better!  Don’t overtire yourself—­don’t use improvidently the new strength.  Remember the winter, and be wise; and let me see you, before it comes, looking as bright and well as I thought you last year.  God bless you always.

Love your ever affectionate
BA.

Robert’s love.

* * * * *

To Miss Mitford

London:  Friday, [October 6, 1852].

My dearest Miss Mitford,—­I am quite in pain to have to write a farewell to you after all.  As soon as Wilson had returned—­and she stayed away much longer than last year—­we found ourselves pushed to the edge of our time for remaining in England, and the accumulation of business to be done before we could go pressed on us.  I am almost mad with the amount of things to be done, as it is; but I should have put the visit to you at the head of them, and swept all the rest on one side for a day, if it hadn’t been for the detestable weather, and my horrible cough which combines with it.  When Wilson came back she found me coughing in my old way, and it has been without intermission up to now, or rather waxing worse and worse.  To have gone down to you and inflicted the noise of it on you would have simply made you nervous, while the risk to myself would have been very great indeed.  Still, I have waited and waited, feeling it scarcely possible to write to you to say, ’I am not coming this year.’  Ah, I am so very sorry and disappointed!  I hoped against hope for a break in the weather, and an improvement in myself; now we must go, and there is no hope.  For about a fortnight I have been a prisoner in the house.  This climate won’t let me live, there’s the truth.  So we are going on Monday.  We go to Paris for a week or two, and then to Florence, and then to Rome, and then to Naples; but we shall be back next year, if God pleases, and then I shall seize an early summer day to run down straight to you and find you stronger, if God blesses me so far.  Think of me and love me a little meanwhile.  I shall do it by you.  And do, do—­since there is no time to hear from you in London—­send a fragment of a note to Arabel for me, that I may have it in Paris before we set out on our long Italian journey.  Let me have the comfort of knowing exactly how you are before we set out.  As for me, I expect to be better on crossing the Channel.  How people manage to live and enjoy life in this fog and cold is inexplicable to me.  I understand the system of the American rapping spirits considerably better....