126 Via Felice, [Rome]:
Monday, [November December 1860].

Ever dearest Isa,--How you grieve me by this news of your being unwell.
Dear, I wondered at having no letter, and now with the letter and all
the proofs of your remembering me (newspaper and pens) comes the bad
word of your being ill....

I myself am not very well. I thought I was going to have a bad attack of
the oppression, but this morning it seems to have almost gone, and
without a blister! I had one night very bad. Probably a sudden call from
the tramontana brought it; even frost we had. Only, on the whole, and
considering accounts from other places, Rome has distinguished itself
for mildness this year; and I hope I shall keep from bad attacks, having
not much strength in body, nerve, or spirit to bear up resistingly
against them....

Sir John Bowring has been to see us. Yes, he speaks with great authority
and conviction, and it carries the more emphasis because he is not
without Antigallican prejudice, I observed. He told me that the panic in
England about invasion had reached, at one time, a point of phrenzy
which would be scarcely credible to anyone who had not witnessed it.
People were in terrors, expecting their houses to be burnt and sacked
directly. Placards of the most inflammatory character, calling
passionately on the riflemen to arm, arm, arm! He himself was hissed at
Edinburgh for venturing to say that the rifle-locks would be very rusty
if only used against invading Napoleons.

He told me that the Emperor's intentions towards Italy had been
undeviatingly ignored, and that whatever had seemed equivocal had been
misunderstood, or was the consequence of misunderstanding, or of the
press of some otherwise great difficulty. The Italian question was only
beginning to be understood in England. I said (in my sarcastic way) that
at first they had seemed to understand it upside down. To which he
replied that when, at the opening of the Revolution, he came over with
several English officers from India, they were _all prepared_ (in case
England didn't fight on the Hapsburg side) to enter the Austrian army as
volunteers to help them to keep down Italy.

But men like Mr. Trollope find it easy to ignore all this. It is we who
have done the most for Italy--we who did nothing! Yes, I admit so far.
We abstained from helping the Austrians with an open force.

That now we wish well to the Italian cause is true, I hope, but, at
best, it is a noble inconsistency; and that we should set up a claim to
a nation's gratitude on these grounds seems to me worse than absurd. The
more we are in earnest now, the more ashamed we should be for what has
been.

I have been sorry about Gaeta;[93] but there is somewhere a cause, and,
perhaps, not hard to find. That the Emperor is ready to do for Italy
_whatever will not sacrifice France_, I am convinced more than ever. And
even the Romans (who have benefited least) think so. One of the patriots
here, a watchmaker, was saying to Ferdinando the other day that he had
subscribed to Garibaldi's fund, and had given his name for Viterbo,[94]
but that there was one man in whom he believed most, and never ceased to
believe--Louis Napoleon. And this is the common feeling. Mr. Trollope
said that they only ventured to unbosom themselves to the English. Now
my belief is that the Italians seldom do this to the English, as far as
Napoleon is concerned. The Italians are _furbi assai_, and wish to
conciliate us, and are perfectly aware of our national jealousies. I
myself have observed the difference in an Italian when speaking to my
own husband before me and speaking to me alone.

Since we came here I have had a letter from Ruskin, written in a very
desponding state about his work, and life, and the world....

Life goes on heavily with me, but it goes on: it has rolled into the
ruts again and goes....

Write to me, my Isa, and love me.

I am your ever loving BA.