w
than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my
original class of fear, and would rather face two or three revolutions
than an east wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to
Pau as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is furious
about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a good deal about
him[183]), or I would go to Italy and try Florence, where really
democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, particularly
when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful
rumours--Florence was to have been sacked several times by the
Livornese; the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family
to Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the walls.
Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine
fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is always enough here to
moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts,
and I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to
do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in
London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps
a gentle and affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines
mixes a little with this feeling of security, but what then? They
are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic
temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius--effeminate,
no, rather _feminine_ in a better sense--of a fancy easily turned into
impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What
they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to
wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry
_vivas_, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier
in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead
bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French
patriots and republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to
the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because
'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a
president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things
abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree
with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though
holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it
always _is_ God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is
but the fermentation necessary to