[Florence: winter 1852-3.]

[_The beginning of the letter is lost_]

The state of things here in Tuscany is infamous and cruel. The old
serpent, the Pope, is wriggling his venom into the heart of all
possibilities of free thought and action. It is a dreadful state of
things. Austria the hand, the papal power the brain! and no energy in
the victim for resistance--only for hatred. They do hate here, I am glad
to say.

But we linger at Florence in spite of all. It was delightful to find
ourselves in the old nest, still warm, of Casa Guidi, to sit in our own
chairs and sleep in our own beds; and here we shall stay as late
perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to
Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient
traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former
soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from
home since we came--just as if we had never known Paris. People come
sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few
intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, such as Mr. Tennyson (the
poet's brother) and Mr. Lytton (the novelist's son) and Mr. Stuart, the
lecturer on Shakespeare, whom once I named to you, I fancy. Mr. Tennyson
married an Italian, and has four children. He has much of the atmosphere
poetic about him, a dreamy, speculative, shy man, reminding us of his
brother in certain respects; good and pure-minded. I like him. Young Mr.
Lytton is very young, as you may suppose, with all sorts of high
aspirations--and visionary enough to suit _me_, which is saying
much--and affectionate, with an apparent liking to us both, which is
engaging to us, of course. We have seen the Trollopes once, the younger
ones, but the elder Mrs. Trollope was visible neither at that time nor
since....

I sit here reading Dumas' 'last,' notwithstanding. Dumas is astonishing;
he never _will_ write himself out; there's no dust on his shoes after
all this running; his last books are better than his first.

Do your American friends write ever to you about the rapping spirits? I
hear and would hear much of them. It is said that at least fifteen
thousand persons in America, of all classes and society, are _mediums_,
as the term is. Most curious these phenomena.

[_The end of the letter is lost_]