Autograph letter signed with initials : [Florence], to Richard Hengist Horne, [1848 December 3].

Describing their life in Florence and their month away from Florence in June; saying "My husband bids me remember to tell you how we rushed away from Florence in June in order to be cooler, & went to Ancona, prudent people that we were, leaping right into the cauldron. The heat was past the fiercest fire of your imagination, & I seethe to think of it at this distance - but we saw the whole coast from Ravenna to Loretto, & had wonderful visions of beauty & glory in passing & repassing the Apennines - At Ravenna, we stood one morning at four, at Dante's tomb, with its pathetic inscription, and seldom has any such sight so moved me. Ravenna is a dreary marshy place with a deadweight of melancholy air fading the faces of its inhabitants - and its pineforest stands off too far to redeem it in any wise. That Lord Byron should have praised it, is just a token of the spells of the Guiccioli . . who has revolutionized, you see, (like the rest of the world) into a M'dme de Boissy. Someone told us the other day that she was 'still very beautiful'...All I complain of at Florence is the difficulty of getting sight of new books, which, I who have been used to a new 'sea serpent' every morning, in the shape of a French romance, care still more for than my husband does - Old books we can arrive at, & besides, our own are coming over the sea - oh, but we have'nt given up England altogether . . we talk of spending summers there & have a scheme of seeing you all next year if circumstances sh'd permit of it;" sending her love to his wife and thanking him for his "...most kind words in which you promise a welcome to my husband's poems, - only you will believe that kindness in t̲h̲a̲t̲ shape must touch me nearest;" adding, in a postscript, that "Dear Miss Mitford has been much less well than usual, I fear, . . but it does not appear to be a dangerous indisposition. You who take courage always, will keep it. The day for thinkers & writers, & only for those, is breaking fast."