58 Welbeck Street: Friday, July 31, 1852 [postmark].

I want to hear about you again, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and I can't
hear. Will you send me a line or a word.... I mean to go down to see you
one day, but certainly we must account it right not to tire you while
you are weak, and not to spoil our enjoyment by forestalling it. Two
months are full of days; we can afford to wait. Meantime let us have a
little gossip such as the gods allow of.

Dear Mr. Kenyon has not yet gone to Scotland, though his intentions
still stand north. He passed an evening with us some evenings ago, and
was brilliant and charming (the two things together), and good and
affectionate at the same time. Mr. Landor was staying with him (perhaps
I told you that), and went away into Worcestershire, assuring me, when
he took leave of me, that he would never enter London again. A week
passes, and lo! Mr. Kenyon expects him again. Resolutions are not always
irrevocable, you observe.

I must tell you what Landor said about Louis Napoleon. You are aware
that he loathed the first Napoleon and that he hates the French nation;
also, he detests the present state of French affairs, and has foamed
over in the 'Examiner' 'in prose and rhyme' on the subject of them.
Nevertheless, he who calls 'the Emperor' 'an infernal fool' expresses
himself to this effect about the President: 'I always knew him to be a
man of wonderful genius. I knew him intimately, and I was persuaded of
what was in him. When people have said to me, "How can you like to waste
your time with so trifling a man?" I have answered: "If all your Houses
of Parliament, putting their heads together, could make a head equal to
this trifling man's head it would be well for England."

It was quite unexpected to me to hear Mr. Landor talk so.

He, Mr. Landor, is looking as young as ever, as full of life and
passionate energy.

Did Mr. Horne write to you before he went to Australia? Did I speak to
you about his going? Did you see the letter which he put into the papers
as a farewell to England? I think of it all sadly.

Mazzini came to see us the other day, with that pale spiritual face of
his, and those intense eyes full of melancholy illusions. I was
thinking, while he sate there, on what Italian turf he would lie at last
with a bullet in his heart, or perhaps with a knife in his back, for to
one of those ends it will surely come. Mrs. Carlyle came with him. She
is a great favorite of mine: full of thought, and feeling, and
character, it seems to me.

London is emptying itself, and the relief will be great in a certain
way; for one gets exhausted sometimes. Let me remember whom I have seen.
Mrs. Newton Crosland, who spoke of you very warmly; Miss Mulock, who
wrote 'The Ogilvies' (that series of novels), and is interesting,
gentle, and young, and seems to have worked half her life in spite of
youth; Mr. Field we have not seen, only heard of; Miss ----, no--but I
am to see her, I understand, and that she is an American Corinna in
yellow silk, but pretty. We drove out to Kensington with Monckton Milnes
and his wife, and I like her; she is quiet and kind, and seems to have
accomplishments, and we are to meet Fanny Kemble at the Procters some
day next week. Many good faces, but the best wanting. Ah, I wish Lord
Stanhope, who shows the spirits of the sun in a crystal ball, could show
us _that_! Have you heard of the crystal ball?[14] We went to meet it
and the seer the other morning, with sundry of the believers and
unbelievers--among the latter, chief among the latter, Mr. Chorley, who
was highly indignant and greatly scandalised, particularly on account of
the combination sought to be established by the lady of the house
between lobster salad and Oremus, spirit of the sun. For my part, I
endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with great equanimity. It
was very curious altogether to my mind, as a sign of the times, if in no
other respect of philosophy. But I love the marvellous. Write a word to
me, I beseech you, and love me and think of me, as I love and think of
you. God bless you. Robert's love.

Your ever affectionate
BA.