Casa Guidi, Florence: March 17, [1853].

Thank you--how to thank you enough--for the too kind present of the
'Madonna,'[19] dearest Mona Nina. I will not wait to read it through--we
have only _looked_ through it, which is different; but there is enough
seen so beautiful as to deserve the world's thanks, to say nothing of
ours, and there are personal reasons besides why _we_ should thank you.
Have you not quoted us, have you not sent us the book? Surely, good
reasons.

But now, be still better to me, and write and say how you are. I want to
know that you are quite well; if you can tell me so, do. You have told
me of a new book, which is excellent news, and I hear from another
quarter that it will consist of your 'Readings' and 'Remarks,' a sort of
book most likely to penetrate widely and be popular in a good sense.
Would it not be well to bring out such a work volume by volume at
intervals? Is it this you are contemplating?...

Robert and I have had a very happy winter in Florence; let me, any way,
answer for myself. I have been well, and we have been quiet and
occupied; reading books, doing work, playing with Wiedeman; and with
nothing from without to vex us much. At the end of it all, we go to
Rome certainly; but we have taken on this apartment for another year,
which Robert decided on to please me, and because it was reasonable on
the whole. We have been meditating Socialism and mysticism of very
various kinds, deep in Louis Blanc and Proudhon, deeper in the German
spiritualists, added to which, I have by no means given up my French
novels and my rapping spirits, of whom our American guests bring us
relays of witnesses. So we don't absolutely moulder here in the
intellect, only Robert (and indeed I have too) has tender recollections
of 'that blaze of life in Paris,' and we both mean to go back to it
presently. No place like Paris for living in. Here, one sleeps,
'perchance to dream,' and praises the pillow.

We had a letter from our friend M. Milsand yesterday; you see he does
not forget us--no, indeed. In speaking of the state of things in France,
which I had asked him to do, he says, he is not sanguine (he never _is_
sanguine, I must tell you, about anything), though entirely dissentient
from _la presse Anglaise_. He considers on the whole that the _status_
is as good as can be desired, as a _stable foundation for the
development of future institutions_. It is in that point of view that he
regards the situation. So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not
'Anglomane' like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or
immoral, let it choose the epithet. The invasion cry, for instance, I
really can't qualify it; I can't comprehend it with motives all good and
fair. I throw it over to you to analyse.

With regard to the sudden death of French literature, you all exaggerate
that like the rest. If you look into even the 'Revue des Deux Mondes'
for the year 1852, you will see that a few books are still published.
_Pazienza._ Things will turn up better than you suppose. Newspapers
breathe heavily just now, that's undeniable; but for book literature the
government _never has_ touched it with a finger. I ascertained _that_ as
a fact when I was in Paris.

None of you in England understand what the crisis has been in France;
and how critical measures have been necessary. Lamartine's work on the
revolution of '48 is one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon; and,
if you want another, take Louis Blanc's work on the same.

Isn't it a shame that nobody comes from the north to the south, after a
hundred oaths? I hear nothing of dear Mr. Kenyon. I hear nothing from
you of _your_ coming. You won't come, any of you....

I am much relieved by hearing that Mazzini is gone from Italy, whatever
Lord Malmesbury may say of it. Every day I expected to be told that he
was taken at Milan and shot. A noble man, though incompetent, I think,
to his own aspiration; but a man who personally has my sympathies
always. The state of things here is cruel, the people are one groan. God
deliver us all, I must pray, and by almost any means.

As to your Ministry, I don't expect very much from it. Lord Aberdeen,
'put on' to Lord John, is using the drag uphill. They will do just as
little as they can, be certain.

Think of my submitting at last to the conjugal will and cod's liver
oil--yes, and think of its doing me good. The cough was nearly, if not
quite, gone because of the climate, before I took the oil, but it does
me good by making me gain in flesh. I am much less thin, and very well,
and dearest Robert triumphant.