newspaper and the 'Saturday Review.'
(By the way, it would be extraordinary if it _were so_.')

Well, I have lived thirteen years on the Continent, and, far as England
is from Italy, far as the heavens are from the earth, I dissent from
you, dissent from you, dissent from you.

I say so, and there is an end. It is relief to me, and will make no
impression on you; but for my sake you permit me to say it, I feel sure.

Dear Mr. Chorley, Robert and I have had true pleasure (in spite of all
this fault-finding) in feeling ourselves close to you in your book.
Volume after volume we have exchanged, talking of you, praising you
here, blaming you there, but always feeling pleasure in reading your
words and speaking your name. Don't say it's the last novel. You, who
can do so much. Write us another at once rather, doing justice to our
sublime Azeglios and acute Cavours and energetic Farinis. If I could
hear an English statesman (Conservative or Liberal) speak out of a large
heart and generous comprehension as I did Azeglio this last spring, I
should thank God for it. I fear I never shall. My boy may, perhaps. Red
tape has garrotted this political generation....

I persist in being in high hopes for my Italy.

Ever affectionately yours
ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

* * * * *

Early in December the move to Rome took place, and they found rooms at
28 Via del Tritone. During the winter Mrs. Browning was preparing for
the press her last volume, the 'Poems before Congress,' while her
husband, in a fit of disinclination to write poetry, occupied himself by
trying his hand at sculpture.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome: December 1859.]

Dearest Sarianna,--Robert will have told you of the success of our
journey, which the necessities of Mr. Landor very nearly pushed back
into the cold too late. We had even resolved that if the wind changed
before morning we would accept it 'as a sign' and altogether give up
Rome. We were all but run to ground, you see. Happily it didn't end so;
and here we are in a very nice sunny apartment, which would have been
far beyond our means last year or any year except just now when the
Pope's obstinacy and the rumoured departure of the French have left Rome
a solitude and called it peace--very problematical peace. (Peni, in
despair at leaving Florence, urged on us that 'for mama to have cold air
in her chest would be better than to h