ould find his
works not only most creditable, but most profitable. I would not
recommend you to each other if it were not for your mutual
advantage, so far as my poor judgment goes. On the 25th my Dramatic
Works are to be published here. I hope they have sent you the
sheets.

I have not heard yet from any American friend, except your
delightful letter and one from Grace Greenwood, but I hope I shall.
I prize the good word of such persons as Drs. Parsons and Holmes and
Professor Longfellow and John Whittier and many others. I am still
very ill.

The Brownings remain this year in Italy. If it be very hot, they
will go for a month or two to the Baths of Lucca, but their home is
Florence. She has taken a fancy to an American female sculptor,--a
girl of twenty-two,--a pupil of Gibson's, who goes with the rest of
the fraternity of the studio to breakfast and dine at a _cafe_, and
yet keeps her character. Also she believes in all your rappings.

God be with you, my very dear friend. I trust you are quite
recovered.

Always affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, August 21, 1854.

My Dear Mr. Fields: Mr. Bayard Taylor having sent me a most
interesting letter, but no address, I trouble you with my reply.
Read it, and you will perhaps understand that I am declining day by
day, and that, humanly speaking, the end is very near. Perhaps there
may yet be time for an answer to this....

I believe that one reason for your not quite understanding my
illness is, that you, if you have seen long and great sickness at
all, which is doubtful, have seen it with an utter prostration of
the mind and the spirits,--that your women are languid and
querulous, and never dream of bearing up against bodily evils by an
effort of the mind. Even now, when half an hour's visit is utterly
forbidden, and half that time leaves me panting and exhausted, I
never mention (except forced into it by your evident disbelief) my
own illness either in speaking or writing,--never, except to answer
Mr. May's questions, or to join my beloved friend, Mr. Pearson, in
thanking God for the visitation which I humbly hope was sent in his
mercy to draw me nearer to him; may he grant me grace to use
it!--for the rest, whilst the intelligence and the sympathy are
vouchsafed to me, I will write of others, and give