; but I have misgivings through their being so entirely unaccustomed
to occupations of the sort, or any critical reading of poetry of
any sort. Robert is quite well and in the best spirits, and has the
headache now only very occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite
recovered my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the bridge
of Trinita every evening after tea to see the sunset on the Arno. May
God bless you all! Give my true love to your father and mother, and my
loving thanks to yourself for that last stitch in the stool. How good
you are, Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister

BA.

Always remind your dear mother that we are no more _bound_ here than
when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.

_To Mrs. Martin_
Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Now I am going to answer your letter, which I
all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because
you directed it to Mrs. _William_ Browning. Pray remember
_Robert Browning_ for the future, in right descent from _Robert
Brunnyng_,[178] the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's
ominous of the actual Robert's being the _last_ English poet;' a
saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen....
We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard.
Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the
journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very
necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live
here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between
taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something
immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four
guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could
have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty
pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we
could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the
whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming
to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving
five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo
Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after
our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a
legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory
thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing--rococo chairs,
spring sofas,