_im_
morals,' as Dr. Bowring might call it) before I married, but Robert,
though a poet and dramatist by profession, being descended from
the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of
dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing
five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree and
extent, and which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions
of the world. So we have been dragging in by inches our chairs and
tables throughout the summer, and by no means look finished and
furnished at this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels
of our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains, which
begin to be necessary in this November tramontana. Yet in a month or
three weeks we shall look quite comfortable--before Christmas; and
in the meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm
with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my
husband's new edition is on the _edge_ of coming out, and we have had
an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act
his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its
public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial
opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to
us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you, our
dear friends. Let me be always

Your affectionate and grateful
BA.

While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised, and the blood of
poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more
for it than the newspapers, or anybody else.

Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December. White roses, as in
June.

[Footnote 183: Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early
in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to
Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to
France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.]

[Footnote 184: Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French
Republic by a popular vote on December 10.]

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: December 16, [1848].

... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy as to keep on
furnishing rooms in the midst of 'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and
the crowned heads packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the _softness_
of our Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap before
they do any harm. These things look worse at a distance