received your letter we have been looking out for 'messengers'
from the Legation, so as to save you postage; while the Embassy people
have been regularly forgetting us whenever there has been an
opportunity. By the way, I catch up that word of 'postage' to beg you
_never to think of it_ when inclined in charity to write to us. If you
knew what a sublunary thing--oh, far below any visible moon!--postage is
to us exiles! Too glad we are to get a letter and pay for it. So write
to me _directly_, dear Fanny, when you think enough of us for that, and
write at length, and tell us of yourself first, swirling off into Pope's
circles--'your country first and then the human race'--and, indeed, we
get little news from home on the subjects which especially interest us.
My sister sends me heaps of near things, but she is not in the magnetic
circles, nor in the literary, nor even in the gossiping. Be good to us,
_you_ who stand near the fountains of life! Every cup of cold water is
worth a ducat here.

To wait to a second page without thanking you for your kindness and
sympathy about 'Colombe' does not do justice to the grateful sense I had
of both at the time, and have now. We were _very_ glad to have your
opinion and impressions. Most of our friends took for granted that we
had supernatural communications on the subject, and did not send us a
word. Mrs. Duncan Stewart was one of the kind exceptions (with yourself
and one or two more), and I write to thank her. It was very pleasant to
hear what you said, dear Fanny. Certainly, says the author, you are
right, and Helen Faucit wrong, in the particular reading you refer to;
but she seems to have been right in so much, that we should only
remember our grateful thoughts of her in general.

Now what am I to say about my illustrations--that is, your illustrations
of my poems? To thank you again and again first. To be eager next to see
what is done. To be sure it is good, and surer still that _you_ are good
for spending your strength on me. See how it is. When you wrote to me, a
new edition was in the press; yes, and I was expecting every day to hear
it was out again. But it would not have done, I suppose, to have used
illustrations for that sort of edition; it would have raised the price
(already too high) beyond the public. But there will be time always for
such arrangements--when it so pleases Mr. Chapman, I suppose. Do tell me
more of what you have done.

We did not go to Rome last w