a prejudice; yet, perhaps, not reasonably.  The curious fact in this movement is, however, the degree in which it works within private families in America.  Has anything of the kind appeared in England?  And has the motion of the tables ever taken the form of alphabetical expression, which has been the case in America?  I had a letter from Athens the other day, mentioning that ’nothing was talked of there except moving tables and spiritual manifestations.’ (The writer was not a believer.) Even here, from the priest to the Mazzinian, they are making circles.  An engraving of a spinning table at a shop window bears this motto:  ’E pur si muove!’ That’s adroit for Galileo’s land, isn’t it?  Now mind you tell me whatever you hear and see.  How does Mrs. Crowe decide?  By the way, I was glad to observe by the papers that she has had a dramatic success.

Your Alexander Smith has noble stuff in him.  It’s undeniable, indeed.  It strikes us, however, that he has more imagery than verity, more colour than form.  He will learn to be less arbitrary in the use of his figures—­of which the opulence is so striking—­and attain, as he ripens, more clearness of outline and depth of intention.  Meanwhile none but a poet could write this, and this, and this.

Your faithfully affectionate
E.B.B., properly speaking BA.

July 3.

This was written ever so long since.  Here we are in July; but I won’t write it over again.  The ‘tables’ are speaking alphabetically and intelligently in Paris; they knock with their legs on the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving and ‘rapping spirits.’  Sarianna—­who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know—­wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a seance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she ’was not as much impressed as she would have been,’ ’but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible that any tricks could have been played.’

This from Sarianna is equal to the same testimony—­from Mr. Chorley, say!

We are planning a retreat into the mountains—­into Giotto’s country, the Casentino—­where we are to find a villa for almost nothing, and shall have our letters sent daily from Florence, together with books and newspapers.  I look forward to it with joy.  We promise one another to be industrious a faire fremir, so as to make the pleasure lawful.  Little Penini walks about, talking of ‘mine villa,’ anxiously hoping that ’some boys’ may not have pulled all the flowers before he gets there.  He boasts, with considerable complacency, that ’a table in Pallis says I am four years,’ though the fact doesn’t strike him as extraordinary.

Do you ever see Mr. Kenyon?  I congratulate you on your friend’s ’Coeur de Lion.’ That has given you pleasure.