es you as well as ever,
you are to understand, through every complication of forms, and you
are to love him, and _me_, for I come in as a part of him, if you
please. Did you get my thanks for the dear Petrarch pen (so steeped in
double-distilled memories that it seems scarcely fit to be steeped in
ink), and our appreciation as well as gratitude for the books--which,
indeed, charm us more and more? Robert has been picking up pictures at
a few pauls each, 'hole and corner' pictures which the 'dealers' had
not found out; and the other day he covered himself with glory by
discovering and seizing on (in a corn shop a mile from Florence) five
pictures among heaps of trash; and one of the best judges in Florence
(Mr. Kirkup) throws out such names for them as Cimabue, Ghirlandaio,
Giottino, a crucifixion painted on a banner, Giottesque, if not
Giotto, but _unique_, or nearly so, on account of the linen material,
and a little Virgin by a Byzantine master. The curious thing is that
two angel pictures, for which he had given a scudo last year, prove
to have been each sawn off the sides of the Ghirlandaio, so called,
representing the 'Eterno Padre' clothed in a mystical garment and
encircled by a rainbow, the various tints of which, together with the
scarlet tips of the flying seraphs' wings, are darted down into the
smaller pictures and complete the evidence, line for line. It has been
a grand altar-piece, cut to bits. Now come and see for yourself. We
can't say decidedly yet whether it will be possible or impossible for
us to go to England this year, but in any case you must come to see
Gerardine and Italy, and we shall manage to catch you by the skirts
then--so do come. Never mind the rumbling of political thunders,
because, even if a storm breaks, you will slip under cover in these
days easily, whether in France or Italy. I can't make out, for my
part, how anybody can be afraid of such things.

Will you be among the likers or dislikers, I wonder sometimes, of
Robert's new book? The _faculty_, you will recognise, in all cases; he
can do anything he chooses. I have complained of the _asceticism_ in
the second part, but he said it was 'one side of the question.' Don't
think that he has taken to the cilix--indeed he has not--but it is his
way to _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them....

Chapman & Hall offer us no copies, or you should have had one, of
course. So Wordsworth is gone--a great light out of heaven.