Florence: June 6, 1854.

Yes, dearest friend, I had your few lines which Arabel sent to me. I had
them on the very day I had posted my letter to you, and I need not say
how deeply it moved me that you should have thought of giving me that
pleasure of Mr. Ruskin's kind word at the expense of what I knew to be
so much pain to yourself....

We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward.
I love Florence, the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its
garden-ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the
nightingales day and night, nay, sung _into_ by the nightingales, for as
you walk along the streets in the evening the song trickles down into
them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight and
firefly-light, and the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay
here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty and love to go, and
at some day not distant, I daresay we shall come back 'for good and all'
as people say, seeing that if you take one thing with another, there is
no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to
live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of
civilisation yet out of the crush of it. I have not seen the Trollopes
yet; but we have spent two delicious evenings at villas on the outside
the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told
you, I think. I like him, we both do, from the bottom of our hearts.
Then our friend Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to
see again. Have you caught sight of his poems? If you have, tell me your
thought. Mrs. Howe's I have read since I wrote last. Some of them are
good--many of the thoughts striking, and all of a certain elevation. Of
poetry, however, strictly speaking, there is not much; and there's a
large proportion of conventional stuff in the volume. She must be a
clever woman. Of the ordinary impotencies and prettinesses of female
poets she does not partake, but she can't take rank with poets in the
good meaning of the word, I think, so as to stand without leaning. Also
there is some bad taste and affectation in the dressing of her
personality. I dare say Mr. Fields will bring you her book. Talking of
American literature, with the publishers on the back of it, we think of
offering the proofs of our new works to any publisher over the water who
will pay us properly for the advantage of bringing out a volume in
America simultaneously with the publication in England. We have heard
that such a proposal will be acceptable, and mean to try it. The words
you sent to me from Mr. Ruskin gave me great pleasure indeed, as how
should they not from such a man? I like him personally, too, besides my
admiration for him as a writer, and I was deeply gratified in every way
to have his approbation. His 'Seven Lamps' I have not read yet. Books
come out slowly to Italy. It's our disadvantage, as you know. Ruskin and
art go together. I must tell you how Rome made me some amends after all.
Page, the American artist, painted a picture of Robert like an Italian,
and then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture,
the colouring so absolutely _Venetian_ that artists can't (for the most
part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the breath of the
likeness is literal.[35] Mr. Page has _secrets_ in the art--certainly
nobody else paints like him--and his nature, I must say, is equal to his
genius and worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the 'Athenaeum' is always
as frigid as Mont Blanc; it can't be expected to grow warmer for looking
over your green valleys and still waters. It wouldn't be Alpine if it
did. They think it a point of duty in that journal to shake hands with
one finger. I dare say when Mr. Chorley sits down to write an article he
puts his feet in cold water as a preliminary. Still, I oughtn't to be
impertinent. He has been very good-natured to _me_, and it isn't his
fault if I'm not Poet Laureate at this writing, and engaged in cursing
the Czar in Pindarics very prettily. 'Atherton,' meanwhile, wants nobody
to praise it, I am sure. How glad I shall be to seize and read it, and
how I thank you for the gift! May God bless and keep you! I may hear
again if you write soon to Florence, but don't pain yourself for the
world, I entreat you. I shall see you before long, I think.

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.

Robert's love.