I hear that Jessie Mario and her husband have been taken up at Ferrara.
They were _only_ going to begin the war with Austria on their own
account. Mazzini deserves what I should be sorry to inflict. He is a man
without conscience. And that's no reason why Jessie and her party should
use him for _theirs_. Mario is only the husband of his wife.

Robert has brought me home a most perfect copy of a small torso of
Venus--from the Greek--in the clay. It is wonderfully done, say the
learned. He says 'all his happiness lies in clay now'; _that_ was his
speech to me this morning. _Not_ a compliment, but said so sincerely and
fervently, that I could not but sympathise and wish him a life-load of
clay to riot in. It's the mixture of physical and intellectual effort
which makes the attraction, I imagine. Certainly he is very well and
very gay.

I am happy to see that the 'North British Quarterly' has an article on
him. That gives hope for England. Thackeray has turned me out of the
'Cornhill' for indecency, but did it so prettily and kindly that I, who
am forgiving, sent him another poem. He says that plain words permitted
on Sundays must not be spoken on Mondays in England, and also that his
'Magazine is for babes and sucklings.' (I thought it was for the
volunteers.)

May God bless you, dearest Sarianna and nonno! Pen's love.

* * * * *

The incident alluded to in the last paragraph deserves fuller mention,
for the credit it does to both parties concerned in it. The letters that
passed between Thackeray and Mrs. Browning on the subject have been
given by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie in the 'Cornhill Magazine' for July 1896,
from which I am allowed to quote them. Mrs. Browning, in reply to a
request from Thackeray for contributions to the then newly established
'Cornhill,' had sent him, among other poems, 'Lord Walter's Wife,'[100]
of which, though the moral is unimpeachable, the subject is not
absolutely _virginibus puerisque_. The editor, in this difficulty, wrote
the following admirable letter:--

* * * * *

_W.M. Thackeray to Mrs. Browning._

36 Onslow Square: April 2, 1861.

My dear, kind Mrs. Browning,--Has Browning ever had an aching tooth
which must come out (I don't say _Mrs._ Browning, for women are much
more courageous)--a tooth which must come out, and which he has kept for
months and months away from the dentist? I have had such a tooth a long
time,