Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/124

108 you in the furnace." These prophetic words, referring to the result of the great conflict in America, she did not live to see verified.

During 1845, Miss Barrett continued a fitful correspondence with Miss Mitford and Horne. The latter she had not as yet seen personally, but Miss Mitford visited her from time to time, occasionally travelling up from Reading in the morning and returning home the same evening, a great fatigue for the elderly lady, as she admitted. Miss Barrett's health now seemed to have permanently improved, and there was only the English winter to fear. On the 29th September she writes to Horne:—

"My foot is in the air—balanced on the probability of a departure from England, for some land of the sun yet in the clouds. Italy perhaps, Madeira possibly, there to finish my recovery, or rather to prevent my yearly rechute in the wintry cold—so let me hear from you quickly. . . . I am likely to go very soon if at all—the uncertainty is dominant—and I have been long and continue still in great vexation and perplexity from this doubtfulness. . . . If I go to Italy, it will be by sea, and high authorities among the doctors promise me an absolute restoration in consequence of it—and I myself have great courage and hope when I do not look beyond myself. I have been drinking life at the sun all this summer (and that is why the fountains of it have seemed so dry to you and the rest of the world), but, though in improved health and courage, I am sometimes a very Jacques for melancholy, and go moralising into a thousand similes half the uses of the day. . . . Miss Mitford proposed kindly coming to see me before I left England, but I have no spirits just now to make farewells of. When I set up my Republic