authors; now do. I believe he is to
return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of
the mountains. Have you read 'Roland Cashel,' isn't _that_ the name of
his last novel? The 'Athenaeum' said of it that it was '_new ground_,'
and praised it. I hear that he gets a hundred pounds for each monthly
number. Oh, how glad I was to have your letter, written in such pain,
read in such pleasure! It was only fair to tell me in the last lines
that the face-ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse. I do
hope that Mr. May is not right about neuralgia, because that is more
difficult to cure than pain which arises from the teeth. Tell me how
you are in all ways. I look into your letters eagerly for news of your
health, then of your spirits, which are a part of health. The cholera
makes me very frightened for my dearest people in London, and silence,
the last longer than usual, ploughs up my days and nights into long
furrows. The disease rages in the neighbourhood of my husband's
family, and though Wimpole Street has been hitherto clear, who can
calculate on what may be? My head goes round to think of it. And papa,
who _will_ keep going into that horrible city! Even if my sisters and
brothers should go into the country as every year, he will be left, he
is no more movable than St. Paul's. My sister-in-law will probably not
come to us as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her
father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the midst of
such contingencies, so perhaps we may go to seek her ourselves in the
spring, if she does not seek us out before in Italy. God keep us all,
and near to one another. Love runs dreadful risks in the world. Yet
Love is, how much the best thing in the world? We have had a great
event in our house. Baby has cut a tooth.... His little happy laugh is
always ringing through the rooms. He is afraid of nobody or nothing
in the world, and was in fits of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse's
head, when he rode on Wilson's knee five or six miles the other day to
a village in the mountains--screaming for joy, she said. He is not six
months yet by a fortnight! His father loves him; passionately, and the
sentiment is reciprocated, I assure you. We have had the coolest
of Italian summers at these Baths of Lucca, the thermometer at the
hottest hour of the hottest day only at seventy-six, and generally at
sixty-eight or seventy. The nights invariably cool. Now the freshness
of