Isa, you and I must try to make head against the strong-minded women, though really you half frighten me prospectively....

——­ ——­, one of the strong-minded, we just escaped with life from in London, and again in Paris.  In Rome she has us!  What makes me talk so ill-naturedly is the information I have since received, that she has put everybody unfortunate enough to be caught, into a book, and published them at full length, in American fashion.  Now I do confess to the greatest horror of being caught, stuck through with a pin, and beautifully preserved with other butterflies and beetles, even in the album of a Corinna in yellow silk.  I detest that particular sort of victimisation....

We are invited to go to Constantinople this summer, to visit the American Minister there.  There’s a temptation for you!

God bless you, dearest Isa.  I shall be delighted to see you again, and so will Robert!  I always feel (I say to him sometimes) that you love me a little, and that I may rest on you.  Your ever affectionate friend,

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

* * * * *

To Miss Mitford

Florence:  March 15, [1853].

...  The spring has surprised us here just as we were beginning to murmur at the cold.  Think of somebody advising me the other day not to send out my child without a double-lined parasol!  There’s a precaution for March!  The sun is powerful—­we are rejoicing in our Italian climate.  Oh, that I could cut out just a mantle of it to wrap myself in, and so go and see you.  Your house is dry, you say.  Is the room you occupy airy as well as warm?  Because being confined to a small room, with you who are so used to liberty and out of door life, must be depressing to the vital energies.  Do you read much?  No, no, you ought not to think of the press, of course, till you are strong.  Ah—­if you should get to London to see our play, how glad I should be!  We, too, talk of London, but somewhat mistily, and not so early in the summer.  Mr. and Mrs. Marsh—­he is the American Minister at Constantinople—­have been staying in Florence, and passing some evenings with us.  They tempt us with an invitation to Constantinople this summer, which would be irresistible if we had the money for the voyage, perhaps, so perhaps it is as well that we have not.  Enough for us that we are going to Rome and to Naples, then northward.  I am busy in the meanwhile with various things, a new poem, and revising for a third edition which is called for by the gracious public.  Robert too is busy with another book.  Then I am helping to make frocks for my child, reading Proudhon (and Swedenborg) and in deep meditation on the nature of the rapping spirits, upon whom, I understand, a fellow dramatist of yours, Henry Spicer (I think you once mentioned him to me as such), has just written a book entitled, ’The Mystery of the Age.’  A happy winter it has been to me altogether.  We have had so much repose,