t to Forster or somebody? _Che che_ (as
the Tuscans exclaim), _who_ was it promised to call at my people's,
who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it as it is.
Goodbye, dearest aunt, and let no revolution disturb your good will to
Ba and

R.B.

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: August 24, 1848.

Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--It's great comfort to have your letter;
for as it came more lingeringly than usual, I had time to be a little
anxious, and even my husband has confessed since that he thought what
he would not say aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability
of your being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly
to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we ask why.
Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving in spirits, as I saw
at the first glance before the words said it clearly....

As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well, yet well; having
enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent
us to Fano as a 'delightful summer residence for an English family,'
and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched with
paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of
the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no
drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A 'circulating
library' 'which doesn't give out books,' and 'a refined and
intellectual Italian society' (I quote Murray for that phrase) which
'never reads a book through' (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's
mother, who has lived in Fano seven years), complete the advantages
of the place, yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture
of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see.[180] By a happy
accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married her
daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has
lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning
as far as I could apprehend. She is a very intelligent and vivacious
person, and having been used to the best French society, bears but ill
this exile from the common civilities of life. I wish Dr. Wiseman, of
whose childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride, would
ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop's palace in
Westminster; there would be no hesitation, I fancy, in her acceptance
of the invitation. Agreeable as she and her daughter were, however, we
fled from Fano after three days, and, finding ou