Lever, smoothes me down a little about Robert, and says
that the sale is bettering itself, and that a new edition of the 'Poems'
will soon be wanted. I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in
'Bentley's Magazine.' Abuse of the 'Congress Poems,' of course. Then a
side stroke at 'Aurora Leigh,' which was original, of course, because
it's my way to stand alone and attack people; but the principal merit of
which otherwise was the suggestion of 'Lucille' (Lytton's new
poem)--'Lucille,' says the critic, being superior in holiness and virtue
and that sort of thing to 'Aurora'! Of course.

They subscribed in England five thousand pounds for Tom Sayers. There's
the advance of civilisation. Napoleon has gone to Baden to arrange the
world a little more comfortably, I hope.

Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans have been here, and are coming back to settle
into our congenial bosom. I admire her books so much, that certainly I
shall not refuse to receive her, though she is not a medium. Sarianna!

Your ever affectionate sister.

* * * * *

The programme of the previous year was repeated in 1860. Returning from
Rome to Florence at the beginning of June, the Brownings in July went to
Siena to avoid the extreme heat of the summer at Florence, staying as
before at the Villa Alberti. Their visit to Siena was, however, rather
shorter than the previous one, lasting only till September.

There is no doubt that Mrs. Browning, during all this time, was losing
ground in point of health; and she now received another severe blow in
the news of the serious illness of her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees
Cook). The anxiety lasted for several months, and ended with the death
of Mrs. Cook in the following winter.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Villa Alberti, Siena: August 21, [1860].

I thank you, my dearest friend, from my heart for your letter, and the
ray of sunshine it brought with it. Do you know I was childish enough
to kiss it as if it knew what it did. I wish I could kiss _you_. Yes, I
have been very unhappy, not giving way on the whole, going about my work
as usual, but with a sense of a black veil between me and whatever I
did, sometimes feeling incapable of crawling down to sit on the cushion
under my own fig-tree for an hour's vision of this beautiful
country--sometimes in 'des transes mortelles' of fear.

But we must not be atheists, as a friend said to me the other day