Dearest Fanny, you were very, very good and generous to take my part with the editor--but _laissez faire_.

These things do one no harm--and, for me, they don't even vex me.

I had an anonymous letter from England the other day, from somebody who recognised me, he said, in some prodigious way as a great Age-teacher, all but divine, I believe, and now gave me up on account of certain atrocities--first, for the poem 'Pan'[92] in the 'Cornhill' (considered _immoral_!) and then for having had my 'brain so turned by the private attentions and flatteries of the Emperor Napoleon when I was in Paris, that I have devoted myself since to help him in the gratification of his selfish ambitions.' Conceive of this, written with an air of conviction, and on the best information.

Now, of the two imputations, I much prefer 'the inspiration from hell.' There's something grandiose about that, to say nothing of the superior honesty of the position.
What a 'mountainous me' I am 'piling up' in this letter, I who want rather to write of _you_....
Italy ought not to draw you just now, Fanny.

We are all looking for war, and wondering where the safety is.