I think you mean never to write to me again. But you should, for I enjoy your letters much for years after I have got them. They tell me all I shall know of Italy, beside many other good things. I received one letter from you from Florence, and as you gave me no particular direction, I wrote to you at the Poste Restante there. I am now inditing this letter on the same venture. As my location is much more permanent, I command you to respond to me the very day you get this, warmed into such faint inspiration as my turnip radiance can kindle. You have seen a turnip lantern perhaps. Well, here I continue to exist: having broken my rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw all the old faces--some only in passing, however--saw as few sights as possible, leaving London two days before the Exhibition opened. This is not out of moroseness or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could be nothing new: and therefore the best way would [be] to come new to it oneself after three or four years absence. I see in Punch a humorous catalogue of supposed pictures; Prince Albert's favourite spaniel and bootjack, the Queen's Macaw with a Muffin, etc., by Landseer, etc., in which I recognize Thackeray's fancy. He is in full vigour play and pay in London, writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of newspapers: and while health lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord Bacon in the British Museum: his nights to the usual profligacy. . . . My dear Frederic, you must select some of your poems and publish them: we want some bits of strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these--etc. Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else but single lines, or else the whole poems. When will you come to England and do it? I dare say I should have stayed longer in London had you been there: but the wits were too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one finds few in London _serious_ men: I mean _serious_ even in fun: with a true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads have mixed us up with metropolitan civilization. I can still find the heart of England beating healthily down here, though no one will believe it.