But now, be still better to me, and write and say how you are.  I want to know that you are quite well; if you can tell me so, do.  You have told me of a new book, which is excellent news, and I hear from another quarter that it will consist of your ‘Readings’ and ‘Remarks,’ a sort of book most likely to penetrate widely and be popular in a good sense.  Would it not be well to bring out such a work volume by volume at intervals?  Is it this you are contemplating?...

Robert and I have had a very happy winter in Florence; let me, any way, answer for myself.  I have been well, and we have been quiet and occupied; reading books, doing work, playing with Wiedeman; and with nothing from without to vex us much.  At the end of it all, we go to Rome certainly; but we have taken on this apartment for another year, which Robert decided on to please me, and because it was reasonable on the whole.  We have been meditating Socialism and mysticism of very various kinds, deep in Louis Blanc and Proudhon, deeper in the German spiritualists, added to which, I have by no means given up my French novels and my rapping spirits, of whom our American guests bring us relays of witnesses.  So we don’t absolutely moulder here in the intellect, only Robert (and indeed I have too) has tender recollections of ‘that blaze of life in Paris,’ and we both mean to go back to it presently.  No place like Paris for living in.  Here, one sleeps, ‘perchance to dream,’ and praises the pillow.

We had a letter from our friend M. Milsand yesterday; you see he does not forget us—­no, indeed.  In speaking of the state of things in France, which I had asked him to do, he says, he is not sanguine (he never is sanguine, I must tell you, about anything), though entirely dissentient from la presse Anglaise.  He considers on the whole that the status is as good as can be desired, as a stable foundation for the development of future institutions.  It is in that point of view that he regards the situation.  So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not ‘Anglomane’ like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or immoral, let it choose the epithet.  The invasion cry, for instance, I really can’t qualify it; I can’t comprehend it with motives all good and fair.  I throw it over to you to analyse.

With regard to the sudden death of French literature, you all exaggerate that like the rest.  If you look into even the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ for the year 1852, you will see that a few books are still published. Pazienza. Things will turn up better than you suppose.  Newspapers breathe heavily just now, that’s undeniable; but for book literature the government never has touched it with a finger.  I ascertained that as a fact when I was in Paris.

None of you in England understand what the crisis has been in France; and how critical measures have been necessary.  Lamartine’s work on the revolution of ’48 is one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon; and, if you want another, take Louis Blanc’s work on the same.