just as to live out of Italy at all, is
impossible for us. It isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us very
much--the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the
country is very pretty--though no more than pretty--nothing marked or
romantic--no mountains, except so far off as to be like a cloud only
on clear days--and no water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low
vineyards, purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing them. . . .
We shall not leave Florence till November--Robert must see Mr. Landor
(his adopted son, Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilson
for a duenna. It's an excellent plan for him and not a bad one for
Wilson. . . . Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Dear
darling Robert amuses me by talking of his "gentleness and sweetness".
A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and very
affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint, he
has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. Wilson will run
many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. What do you say
to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like what's on it?
And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been already
accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though there
was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut in his
sleep"--) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him--and
the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguile
the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. He
laughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will have
to write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.'

Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome:

'. . . We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment
before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out into a little
garden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn't mind a situation rather out
of the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. Wilson has
thirty pounds a year for taking care of him--which sounds a good deal,
but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate
impulses--but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothing
coheres in him--either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. It
isn't age--he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still,
his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, a