them, to be completed when the round of this life
is complete for us also. Dearest Sarianna, why do I say such things,
but because I have known what grief is? Oh, and how I could have
compounded with you, grief for grief, mine for yours, for _I_ had no
last words nor gestures, Sarianna. God keep you from such a helpless
bitter agony as mine then was. Dear Sarianna, you will think of us
and of Florence, my dear sister, and remember how you have made us
a promise and have to keep it. May God bless you and comfort you.
We think of you and love you continually, and I am always your most
affectionate

BA.

In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning speaks in the
above letter, was effected, the place ultimately chosen for escape
from the summer heat in the valley of the Arno being the Bagni
di Lucca. Here three months were spent, as the following letters
describe. By this time the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in
failure everywhere. The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated
Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles Albert. The
Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and the Grand Duke had re-entered
his capital under the protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been
reduced to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the French
entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his leanings to reform
and constitutional government; on the 24th, Venice, after an heroic
resistance, capitulated to the Austrians. The struggle was over for
the time; the longing for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and
we hear little, for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it
might seem justifiable to despair of the republic.

_To Miss Mitford_
Bagni di Lucca, Toscana: [about July 1849].

At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have not been
forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool
air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer
nest on. My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut
one's eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last
March--loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered.
His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from
New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I was very anxious,
and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence
assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar. And I had
the greatest difficulty i