ed friend. Let me ever be (my husband
joining in all warm regards) your most affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 180:'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
(Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray
Holding his little hands up, each to each
Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,
Over the earth where so much lay before him
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
And he was left at Fano by the beach.

'We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul's content
My angel with me too.']

[Footnote 181: The first two volumes of _Modern Painters_ bore no
author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.'
At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some
subsequent letters testify.]

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: October 10, 1848.

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Have you not thought some hard thoughts
of me, for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must
have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest? Do I not
love you truly? Yes, indeed. But while preparing to write to you
my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in
another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for
nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat. I had not the
heart to write a line to anyone, much less to prepare a packet to
escort your letter free from foreign postage; and to make you pay for
a chapter of Lamentations' without the spirit of prophecy, would have
been too hard on you, wouldn't it? Quite unhappy I have been over
those burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had
by _them_, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and if it hadn't been
that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and
Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt
to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever
got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a
potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant,
who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying, 'O
Inglesi, Inglesi!' the case would have been far worse, I have no kind
of doubt. For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping,
and the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to
Father Prout, always. The very sight of some one with a friend's nam