Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
August 20 and 21, 1853.

  ... We are enjoying the mountains here, riding the donkeys in the
footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basins full.
The strawberries succeed one another, generation after generation,
throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the
hills. If a tree is felled in the forests strawberries spring up just as
mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing. Our little
Penini is wild with happiness; he asks in his prayers that God would
'mate him dood and tate him on a dontey,' (make him good and take him on
a donkey), so resuming all aspiration for spiritual and worldly
prosperity. Then our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Story, help the mountains to
please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of
his father, and, for himself, sculptor and poet; and she a sympathetic,
graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards
and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses. Last night they
were our visitors, and your name came in among the Household Gods to
make us as agreeable as might be. We were considering your expectations
about Mr. Hawthorne. 'All right,' says Mr. Story, '_except the rare half
hours_' (of eloquence). He represents Mr. Hawthorne as not silent only
by shyness, but by nature and inaptitude. He is a man, it seems, who
talks wholly and exclusively with the pen, and who does not open out
socially with his most intimate friends any more than with strangers. It
isn't his _way_ to converse. That has been a characteristic of some men
of genius before him, you know, but you will be nevertheless
disappointed, very surely. Also, Mr. Story does not imagine that you
will get anything from him on the subject of the 'manifestations.' You
have read the 'Blithedale Romance,' and are aware of his opinion
expressed there? He evidently recognised them as a sort of scurvy
spirits, good to be slighted, because of their disreputableness. By the
way, I heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris,
from Mr. Appleton, Longfellow's brother-in-law, who is said to be a man
of considerable ability, and who is giving himself wholly just now to
the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the 'sublimest
conundrum ever given to the world for guessing.' He appears still in
doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are
not produced by an _unconscious projection in the medium of a second
personality, accompanied with clairvoyance, and attended by physical
manifestations_. This seems to me to double the difficulty; yet the idea
is entertained as a doubtful sort of hypothesis by such men as Sir
Edward Lytton and others. _Imposture_ is absolutely out of the question,
be certain, as an ultimate solution, and a greater proof of credulity
can scarcely be given than a belief in imposture as things are at
present. But I was going to tell you Mr. Appleton has a young American
friend in Paris, who, 'besides being a very sweet girl,' says he, 'is a
strong medium.' By Lamartine's desire he took her to the poet's house;
'all the phenomena were reproduced, and everybody present convinced,'
Lamartine himself 'in ecstasies.' Among other spirits came Henry Clay,
who said, 'J'aime Lamartine.' We shall have it in the next volume of
biography. Louis Napoleon gets oracles from the 'raps,' and it is said
that the Czar does the same,--your Emperor, certainly,--and the King of
Holland is allowing the subject to absorb him. 'Dying out! dying out!'
Our accounts from New York are very different, but unbelieving persons
are apt to stop their ears and exclaim, 'We hear nothing now.' On one
occasion the Hebrew Professor at New York was addressed in Hebrew to his
astonishment.

Well, I don't believe, with all my credulity, in poets being perfected
at universities. What can be more absurd than this proposition of
'finishing' Alexander Smith at Oxford or Cambridge? We don't know how to
deal with literary genius in England, certainly. We are apt to treat
poets (when we condescend to treat them at all) as over-masculine papas
do babies; and Monckton Milnes was accused of only touching his in order
to poke out its eyes, for instance. Why not put this new poet in a
public library? There are such situations even among us, and something
of the kind was done for Patmore. The very judgment Tennyson gave of
him, _in the very words_, we had given here--'fancy, not imagination.'
Also, imagery in excess; thought in deficiency. Still, the new poet is a
true poet, and the defects obvious in him may be summed up in _youth_
simply. Let us wait and see. I have read him only in extracts, such as
the reviews give, and such as a friend helped me to by good-natured MS.
It is extraordinary to me that with his amount of development, as far as
I understand it, he has met with so much rapid recognition. Tell me if
you have read 'Queechy,' the American book--novel--by Elizabeth
Wetherell? I think it very clever and characteristic. Mrs. Beecher Stowe
scarcely exceeds it, after all the trumpets. We are about to have a
visit from Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son--only child now. Did I tell
you that he was a poet--yes, and of an unquestionable faculty? I expect
much from him one day, when he shakes himself clear of the poetical
influences of the age, which he will have strength to do presently. He
thinks as well as sees, and that is good....

Oh yes! I like Mr. Kingsley. I am glad he spoke kindly of _us_, because
really I like him and admire him. Few people have struck me as much as
he did last year in England. 'Manly,' do you say? But I am not very fond
of praising men by calling them _manly_. I hate and detest a masculine
man. _Humanly_ bold, brave, true, direct, Mr. Kingsley is--a moral
cordiality and an original intellect uniting in him. I did not see
_her_ and the children, but I hope we shall be in better fortune next
time.

Since I began this letter the Storys and ourselves have had a grand
donkey-excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on
the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of
tumbling down various precipices; but the scenery was exquisite--past
speaking of for beauty. Oh those jagged mountains, rolled together like
pre-Adamite beasts, and setting their teeth against the sky! It was
wonderful. You may as well guess at a lion by a lady's lapdog as at
Nature by what you see in England. All honour to England, lanes and
meadowland, notwithstanding; to the great trees above all. Will you
write to me sooner? Will you give me the details of yourself? Will you
love me?

Your most affectionate
BA.