I am beginning to be anxious about ‘Colombe’s Birthday.’  I care much more about it than Robert does.  He says that nobody will mistake it for his speculation, it’s Mr. Buckstone’s affair altogether.  True; but I should like it to succeed, being Robert’s play notwithstanding.  But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries.  I am nervous about it.  On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know; and what in the world made them select it if it is not likely to answer their purpose?  By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been ‘prepared for the stage by the author.’  Don’t believe a word of it.  Robert just said ‘yes’ when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of communication has passed since.  He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing.  He referred them to his new edition; and that was the whole.

We see a great deal of Mr. Tennyson.  Robert is very fond of him, and so am I. He too writes poems, and prints them, though not for the public.  They are better and stronger than Charles Tennyson’s, and he has the poetical temperament in everything.  Did I tell you that he had married an Italian, and had children from twelve years old downwards?  He is intensely English nevertheless, as expatriated Englishmen generally are.  I always tell Robert that his patriotism grows and deepens in exact proportion as he goes away from England.  As for me, it is not so with me.  I am very cosmopolitan, and am considerably tired of the self-deification of the English nation at the expense of all others.  We have some noble advantages over the rest of the world, but it is not all advantage.  The shameful details of bribery, for instance, prove what I have continually maintained, the non-representativeness of our ‘representative system;’ and, socially speaking, we are much behindhand with most foreign peoples.  Let us be proud in the right place, I say, and not in the wrong.  ’We see too a good deal of young Lytton, Sir Edward’s only son, an interesting young man, with various sorts of good, and aspiration to good, in him.  You see we are not at Rome yet.  Do write to me.  Speak of yourself particularly.  God bless you, dearest friend.  Believe that I think of you and love you most faithfully.

BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

Florence:  April 21, 1853.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I am in consternation and vexation on receiving your letter.  What you must have thought of me all this time!  Of course I never saw the letters which went to Rome.  Letters sent to Poste restante, Rome, are generally lost, even if you are a Roman:  and we are no Romans, alas! nor likely to become such, it seems to me.  There’s a fatality about Rome to us.  I waited for you to write, and then waited on foolishly for the settlement of our own plans, after I had ascertained that you were not in Devonshire, but in France as usual.  Now, I can’t help writing, though I have written a letter already which must have crossed yours—­a long letter—­so that you will have more than enough of me this time.