Florence: April 20, 1855.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again,
and prosperous--thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me and
laugh, because it's a clear case of bulbous root with me--let me pass
(being humble) for the onion. I was looking miserable in February, and
really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my
perch again--nay, even out of my cage door. The weather is divine. One
feels in one's self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have
recovered flesh and fire--my very hair curls differently. '_Is I, I?_' I
say with the metaphysicians. There's something vital about this Florence
air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap in
my life before after illness. Robert and I need to run as well as leap.
We have quantities of work to do, and small time to do it in. He is
four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who
transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription--have not
transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand. We go to England, or at
least to Paris, next month, but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you!
Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits.
Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at
Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great
tragedy of the world was going on _there_. It was tragic, but there are
more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs--ay, and more exasperating
wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, and
we mean to work it out. Oh, you will see. Your committees nibble on, and
this and that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely, while the bush to
the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other
side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no;
we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that
nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of
destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again,
smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next
winter, you will see.

Meanwhile, dearest Mrs. Martin, that _you_ should ask me about
'Armageddon' is most assuredly a sign of the times. You know I pass for
being particularly mad myself, and everybody, almost universally, is
rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read
about 'visible spirit-hands,' pianos playing themselves, and
flesh-and-blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables
and lamps. Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a
friend of ours in Florence five times, signifying his pleasure that it
should be destroyed at once as unauthentic (our friend burnt it
directly, which will encourage me to pull down mine by [_word lost_]).
Savonarola also has said one or two things, and there are gossiping
guardian angels, of whom I need not speak. Let me say, though, that
nothing has surprised me quite so much as _your_ inquiring about
Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world
of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs
before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see 'how
very wild that Ba is getting!' Well, now it shall be my turn to be
sensible and unbelieving. There's a forced similitude certainly, in the
etymology, between the two words; but if it were full and perfect I
should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever
signify anything but a great spiritual strife. The terms, taken from a
symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr. Cumming and
a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I
don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow.
Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own
time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in
certain things. I expect _no_ renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for
instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be
personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation.
What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to
the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations,
and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also, and in the meanwhile,
the war seems to be just and necessary. There is nothing in it to
regret, except the way of conducting it....

Write to me soon again, and tell me as much of both of you as you can
put into a letter.

May God bless you always!

With Robert's warm regards, both of you think of me as

Your ever affectionate
BA.