In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning speaks in the above letter, was effected, the place ultimately chosen for escape from the summer heat in the valley of the Arno being the Bagni di Lucca. Here three months were spent, as the following letters describe. By this time the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in failure everywhere. The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles Albert. The Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and the Grand Duke had re-entered his capital under the protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been reduced to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the French entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his leanings to reform and constitutional government; on the 24th, Venice, after an heroic resistance, capitulated to the Austrians. The struggle was over for the time; the longing for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and we hear little, for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it might seem justifiable to despair of the republic. _To Miss Mitford_ Bagni di Lucca, Toscana: [about July 1849]. At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have not been forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last March--loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered. His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I was very anxious, and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar. And I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a month or two--he who generally delights so in travelling, had no mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear that baby and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. _Ce que femme veut_, if the latter is at all reasonable, or the former persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed that we two should go on an exploring journey to find out where we could have most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and Wilson while we were absent. We went along the coast to Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through the olive forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods, glorious surprises of most exquisite scenery. I say olive forests advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions, shading the ground with tents of silvery network. The olive near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise a little, too, the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road where we travelled.