ever can wear off books like that.

And as to your book, it will come, it will come, and meantime I may
assure you that posterity is very impatient for it. The Italian poem
will be read with the interest which is natural. You know it's a
more than doubtful point whether Shakespeare ever saw Italy out of
a vision, yet he and a crowd of inferior writers have written about
Venice and vineyards as if born to the manner of them. We hear of
Carlyle travelling in France and Germany--but I must leave room for
the words you ask for from a certain hand below.

Ever dear Mr. Westwood's obliged and faithful

E.B.B.

And the 'certain hand' will write its best (and far better than any
poor 'Pippa Passes') in recording a feeling which does not pass at
all, that of gratitude for all such generous sympathy as dear Mr.
Westwood's for E.B.B. and (in his proper degree) R. BROWNING.

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: December 13, 1850.

_Did_ I write a scolding letter, dearest Miss Mitford? So much the
better, when people deserve to be scolded. The worst is, however,
that it sometimes does them no sort of good, and that they will sit
on among the ruins of Carthage, let ever so many messages come from
Italy. My only hope now is, that you will have a mild winter in
England, as we seem likely to have it here; and that in the spring,
by the help of some divine interposition of friends supernaturally
endowed (after the manner of Mr. Chorley), you may be made to go away
into a house with fast walls and chimneys. Certainly, if you could be
made to _write_, anything else is possible. That's my comfort. And
the other's my hope, as I said; and so between hope and consolation
I needn't scold any more. Let me tell you what I have heard of Mrs.
Gaskell, for fear I should forget it later. She is connected by
marriage with Mrs. A.T. Thompson, and from a friend of Mrs. Thompson's
it came to me, and really seems to exonerate Chapman & Hall from the
charge advanced against them. 'Mary Barton' was shown in manuscript
to Mrs. Thompson, and failed to please her; and, in deference to her
judgment, certain alterations were made. Subsequently it was offered
to all or nearly all the publishers in London and rejected. Chapman
& Hall accepted and gave a hundred pounds, as you heard, for the
copyright of the work; and though the success did not, perhaps (that
is quite possible), induce any liberality with regard to copies, they
gave _another hundred pounds_ upon p