Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (however unnecessarily) that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling--I trust she is well and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well and rejoicing just now in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck on a dragon-fly's back. My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with those of, Dear Leighton, yours affectionately ever, R. Browning. October 1859. Mrs. to Miss Browning. '. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Rome again this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and we did wish to keep quiet this winter,--the taste for constant wanderings having passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see that by no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end--and then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either for ourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to live at Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, what with going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It's too true. It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there is impossible for us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, is impossible for us. It isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us very much--the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the country is very pretty--though no more than pretty--nothing marked or romantic--no mountains, except so far off as to be like a cloud only on clear days--and no water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low vineyards, purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing them. . . . We shall not leave Florence till November--Robert must see Mr. Landor (his adopted son, Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilson for a duenna. It's an excellent plan for him and not a bad one for Wilson. . . . Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Dear darling Robert amuses me by talking of his "gentleness and sweetness". A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint, he has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. Wilson will run many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. What do you say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like what's on it? And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been already accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though there was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut in his sleep"--) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him--and the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguile the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. He laughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will have to write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.' Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome: