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The summer ‘retreat’ from Florence this year was not to the Casentino after all, but to the Baths of Lucca, which they had already visited in 1849.  During their stay there, which lasted from July to October, Mr. Browning is said to have composed ‘In a Balcony.’

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To Miss Mitford

Florence:  July 15, 1853.

...  We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca, after a little holy fear of the company there; but the scenery, the coolness, and the convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon.  You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago, just after the birth of our child.  The mountains are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.

Yesterday evening we had the American Minister at the Court of Turin here, and it was delightful to hear him talk about Piedmont, its progress in civilisation and the comprehension of liberty, and the honesty and resolution of the King.  It is the only hope of Italy, that Piedmont!  God prosper the hope.  Besides this diplomatical dignitary and his wife, we had two American gentlemen of more than average intelligence, who related wonderful things of the ’spiritual manifestations’ (so called), incontestable things, inexplicable things.  You will have seen Faraday’s letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me.  If I know certain facts on this subject, Faraday ought to have known them before he expressed an opinion on it.  His statement does not meet the facts of the case—­it is a statement which applies simply to various amateur operations without touching on the essential phenomena, such as the moving of tables untouched by a finger.

Our visitor last night, to say nothing of other witnesses, has repeatedly seen this done with his eyes—­in private houses, for instance, where there could be no machinery—­and he himself and his brother have held by the legs of a table to prevent the motion—­the medium sitting some yards away—­and that table has been wrenched from their grasp and lifted into the air.  My husband’s sister, who has admirable sense and excessive scepticism on all matters of the kind, was present the other day at the house of a friend of ours in Paris, where an English young lady was medium, and where the table expressed itself intelligently by knocking, with its leg, responses according to the alphabet.  For instance, the age of my child was asked, and the leg knocked four times.  Sarianna was ‘not impressed,’ she says, but, ’being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.’  To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly.  Mr. Spicer’s book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once.  By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting ‘Recollections,’ and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better by the telling—­in reference to Washington.