I've no heart to write about anything in Europe to you now. When are
you coming back again? Please send me a line as soon as you get safe
over, to say you are all--wrong, but not lost in the Atlantic.
I don't know if you will ever get this letter, but I hope you will
think it worth while to glance again at the Denmark Hill pictures; so
I send this to my father, who, I hope, will be able to give it you.
I really am very sorry you are going,--you and yours; and that is
absolute fact, and I shall not enjoy my Swiss journey at all so much
as I might. It was a shame of you not to give me warning before. I
could have stopped at Paris so easily for you! All good be with you!
Remember me devotedly to the young ladies, and believe me ever
affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
In Rome Mrs. Stowe had formed a warm friendship with the Brownings,
with whom she afterwards maintained a correspondence. The following
letter from Mrs. Browning was written a year after their first
meeting.
ROME, 126 VIA FELICE, 14 _March_, 1861.
MY DEAR, MRS. STOWE,--Let me say one word first. Your letter, which
would have given me pleasure if I had been in the midst of pleasures,
came to me when little beside could have pleased. Dear friend, let me
say it, I had had a great blow and loss in England, and you wrote
things in that letter which seemed meant for me, meant to do me good,
and which did me good,--the first good any letter or any talk did me;
and it struck me as strange, as more than a coincidence, that your
first word since we parted in Rome last spring should come to me in
Rome, and bear so directly on an experience which you did not know of.
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