Casa Guidi, Florence: February [1853].

I had just heard of your accident from Arabel, my much loved friend, and
was on the point of writing to you when your letter came. To say that I
was shocked and grieved to hear such news of you, is useless indeed; you
will feel how I have felt about it. May God bless and restore you, and
make me very thankful, as certainly I must be in such a case....

The comfort to me in your letter is the apparent good spirits you write
in, and the cheerful, active intentions you have of work for the delight
of us all. I clap my hands, and welcome the new volumes. Dearest friend,
I do wish I had heard about the French poetry in Paris, for there I
could have got at books and answered some of your questions. The truth
is, I don't know as much about French modern poetry as I ought to do in
the way of _metier_. The French essential poetry seems to me to flow out
into prose works, into their school of romances, and to be least
poetical when dyked up into rhythm. Mdme. Valmore I never read, but she
is esteemed highly, I think, for a certain _naivete_, and happy
surprises in the thought and feeling, _des mots charmants_. I wanted to
get her books in Paris, and missed them somehow; there was so much to
think of in Paris. Alfred de Musset's poems I read, collected in a
single volume; it is the only edition I ever met with. The French value
him extremely for his _music_; and there is much in him otherwise to
appreciate, I think; very beautiful things indeed. He is best to my mind
when he is most lyrical, and when he says things in a breath. His
elaborate poems are defective. One or two Spanish ballads of his seem to
me perfect, really. He has great power in the introduction of familiar
and conventional images without disturbing the ideal--a good power for
these days. The worst is that the moral atmosphere is _bad_, and that,
though I am not, as you know, the very least bit of a prude (not enough
perhaps), some of his poems must be admitted to be most offensive. Get
St. Beuve's poems, they have much beauty in them you will grant at once.
Then there is a Breton[17] poet whose name Robert and I have both of us
been ungrateful enough to forget--we have turned our brains over and
over and can't find the name anyhow--and who, indeed, deserves to be
remembered, who writes some fresh and charmingly simple idyllic poems,
one called, I think, 'Primel et Nola.' By that clue you may hunt him out
perhaps in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination,
understand--nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool
sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet
has more positive genius. He is a man of grand, extravagant conceptions.
Do you know the 'Ahasuerus'?

I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part,
I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by
the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip in the face of Austria
is an especial compliment to me--or, _so I feel it_. Let him head the
democracy and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great
opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the Peace Society are pleasing me
infinitely just now in making head against the immorality (that's the
word) of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral
in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were
not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from good
authority, is 'charming and good at heart.' She was educated 'at a
respectable school at Bristol' (Miss Rogers's, Royal Crescent, Clifton),
and is very 'English,' which doesn't prevent her from shooting with
pistols, leaping gates, driving 'four-in-hand,' and upsetting the
carriage when the frolic requires it, as brave as a lion and as true as
a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale and pure; her hair
light, rather 'sandy,' they say, and she powders it with gold dust for
effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is
generally attributed to her. She is a woman of 'very decided opinions.'
I like all that, don't you? and I liked her letter to the Prefet, as
everybody must. Ah, if the English press were in earnest in the cause of
liberty, there would be something to say for our poor trampled-down
Italy--much to say, I mean. Under my eyes is a people really oppressed,
really groaning its heart out. But these things are spoken of with
measure.

We are reading Lamartine and Proudhon on '48. We have plenty of French
books here; only the poets are to seek--the moderns. Do you catch sight
of Moore in diary and letters? Robert, who has had glimpses of him, says
the 'flunkeyism' is quite humiliating. It is strange that you have not
heard more of the rapping spirits. They are worth hearing of were it
only in the point of view of the physiognomy of the times, as a sign of
hallucination and credulity, if not more. Fifteen thousand persons in
all ranks of society, and all degrees of education, are said to be
_mediums_, that is _seers_, or rather hearers and recipients, perhaps.
Oh, I can't tell you all about it; but the details are most curious. I
understand that Dickens has caught a wandering spirit in London and
showed him up victoriously in 'Household Words' as neither more nor less
than the 'cracking of toe joints;' but it is absurd to try to adapt such
an explanation to cases in general. You know I am rather a visionary,
and inclined to knock round at all the doors of the present world to try
to get out, so that I listen with interest to every goblin story of the
kind, and, indeed, I hear enough of them just now.

We heard nothing, however, from the American Minister, Mr. Marsh, and
his wife, who have just come from Constantinople in consequence of the
change of Presidency, and who passed an evening with us a few days ago.
She is pretty and interesting, a great invalid and almost blind, yet she
has lately been to Jerusalem, and insisted on being carried to the top
of Mount Horeb. After which I certainly should have the courage to
attempt the journey myself, if we had money enough. Going to the Holy
Land has been a favorite dream of Robert's and mine ever since we were
married, and some day you will wonder why I don't write, and hear
suddenly that I am lost in the desert. You will wonder, too, at our
wandering madness, by the way, more than at any rapping spirit extant;
we have 'a spirit in our feet,' as Shelley says in his lovely Eastern
song--and our child is as bad as either of us. He says, 'I _tuite_ tired
of _Flolence_. I want to go to _Brome_,' which is worse than either of
us. I never am tired of Florence. Robert has had an application from
Miss Faucit (now Mrs. Martin) to bring out his 'Colombe's Birthday' at
the Haymarket.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]