some day into your studio, and buffet the
piano, without having grown a stranger. Another thing--do take proper
care of your health, and exercise yourself; give those vile indigestions
no chance against you; keep up your spirits, and be as distinguished and
happy as God meant you should. Can I do anything for you at Rome--not to
say, Florence? We go thither (i.e. to Florence) to-morrow, stay there a
month, probably, and then take the Siena road again.'

The next paragraph refers to some orders for photographs, and is not
specially interesting.

Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago--very pleasant it was to see
him: he left for Florence, stayed a day or two and returned to Mrs.
Cartwright (who remained at the Inn) and they all departed prosperously
yesterday for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his way
thither--we liked him much. Prinsep and Jones--do you know them?--are in
the town. The Storys have passed the summer in the villa opposite,--and
no less a lion than dear old Landor is in a house a few steps off. I
take care of him--his amiable family having clawed him a little
too sharply: so strangely do things come about! I mean his Fiesole
'family'--a trifle of wife, sons and daughter--not his English
relatives, who are generous and good in every way.

Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (however
unnecessarily) that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling--I
trust she is well and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well and
rejoicing just now in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck on
a dragon-fly's back. My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with those
of, Dear Leighton, yours affectionately ever, R. Browning.

October 1859.

Mrs. to Miss Browning.

'. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Rome
again this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and we
did wish to keep quiet this winter,--the taste for constant wanderings
having passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see that
by no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end--and
then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either for
ourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to live
at Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, what
with going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It's
too true. It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there is
impossible for us, almost