Venice: June 4, [1851].

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I must write to you from Venice, though
it can only be a few lines. So much I have to say and _feel_ in writing
to you, and thinking that you were not well when you wrote last to me, I
long to hear from you--and yet I can't tell you to-day where a letter
will find me. We are wanderers on the face of the world just now, and
with every desire of going straight from Venice to Milan to-morrow
(Friday) week, we shall more probably, at the Baths of Recoaro, be
lingering and lingering. Therefore will you write to the care of Miss
Browning, New Cross, Hatcham, near London? for so I shall not lose your
letter. I have been between heaven and earth since our arrival at
Venice. The heaven of it is ineffable. Never had I touched the skirts of
so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails
of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting
silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up
together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not
a second Venice in the world. Do you know, when I came first I felt as
if I never could go away. But now comes the earth side. Robert, after
sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable, and nervous, and unable to eat
or sleep; and poor Wilson, still worse, in a miserable condition of
continual sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices--so
exquisite and so bilious! Therefore I am constrained away from my joys
by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going off on Friday.
For myself, it does not affect me at all. I like these moist, soft,
relaxing climates; even the scirocco doesn't touch me much. And the baby
grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything.

No, indeed and indeed, we are not going to England for the sake of the
Exposition. How could you fancy such a thing, even once. In any case we
shall not reach London till late, and if by any arrangement I could see
my sister Arabel in France or on the coast of England, we would persuade
Robert's family to meet us there, and not see London at all. Ah, if you
knew how abhorrent the thought of England is to _me_! Well, we must not
talk of it. My eyes shut suddenly when my thoughts go that way.

Tell me exactly how you are. I heartily rejoice that you have decided
at last about the other house, so as to avoid the danger of another
autumn and winter in the damp. Do you write still for Mr. Chorley's
periodical, and how does it go on? Here in Italy the fame of it does not
penetrate. As for Venice, you can't get even a 'Times,' much less an
'Athenaeum.' We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (the whole
box on the ground tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence English.
Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under
the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and
reading the French papers. Can you fancy me so?

You will receive a copy of my new poem, 'Casa Guidi Windows,' soon after
this note. I have asked Sarianna Browning to see that you receive it
safely. I don't give away copies (having none to give away, according to
booksellers' terms), but I can't let you receive my little book from
another hand than the writer's. Tell me how you like the poem--honestly,
truly--which numbers of people will be sure to dislike profoundly and
angrily, perhaps. We think of going to Recoaro because Mr. Chorley
praised it to us years ago. Tell him so if you write.

Here are a heap of words tossed down upon paper. I can't put the stops
even. Do write _about yourself_, not waiting for the book.

Your ever attached
E.B.B.

At Paris how near we shall be! How sure to meet. Have you been to the
Exposition yourself? Tell me. And what is the general feeling _now_?