ect to
you, you will all perceive, just as _we know_, that we have simply
thus solved the problem of making our small income carry us to
England, not only next summer, but many a summer after. We should like
to give every summer to dear England, and hide away from the cold only
when it comes. By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end
of the present year; while for afterward, here's a residence--that is,
a_pied a terre_--in Italy, all but free when we wish to use it; and
when we care to let it, producing eight or ten pounds a month in help
of travelling expenses. It's the best investment for Mr. Moxon's money
we could have looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and
after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your working
classes in the Pancras building contrived for them by the philanthropy
of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish you could see what rooms we have,
what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for
orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!
Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, being
bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little pond of gold and
silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw the mosquitos in clouds,
such an apocalypse of them as has not yet been visible to me in all
Florence, and I dread mosquitos more than Austrians; and he, in his
unspeakable goodness, deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the
camellias without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should have if
it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less private than
our terrace here, where we can have camellias also if we please. How
pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor must be! We had a long
_muse_ over your father's sketch of it, and set faces at the windows.
That the dear invalid is better for the change must have brightened
it, too, to her companions, and the very sound of a 'forest' is
something peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well,
and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite, quite
mountains, such as you have not in England.

Robert says that if 'Blackwood' likes to print a poem of mine and send
you the proofs, you will be so very good as to like to correct them.
To me it seems too much to ask, when you have work for him to do
beside. Will it be too much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I
would ask my _other_ sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for
me