So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily (like a landsman in a sailing ship) before one can do any work with one's hand and brain. We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves my husband, I am proud to say. [Footnote 165:'This country saving is a glorious thing: And if a common man achieved it? well. Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king? That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable. A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell So heavy round the neck of it--albeit We fain would grant the possibility For thy sake, Pio Nono!' _Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.] [Footnote 166: The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was made to popular aspirations.] _To Miss Mitford_ [Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark]. Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I am delighted to have your letter, and lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not appear. The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,' one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely _sensual_ as fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs. Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national music, I don't know; I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have done well--men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.' Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught I know, of course; but you _sha'n't_ say that he has not done some fine things in poetry. Now, you _know_ what the first book of 'Orion' is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you _sha'n't_ say that you don't know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay, however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence. So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the