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  My dear Mr. Whitman,

Your very interesting & valued letter of 30 Jan.y​ ought to have been answered before now. As you are willing to confess in it, however, to being an irregular correspondent, I gladly avail myself of so tempting an opening for saying that I am the same—& shall feel confident that my delay is pardoned.

I read with much zeal the poem you kindly sent me, with its deep sonata–like alternations of emotion.

It was a peculiar pleasure to me to get acquainted with Mr. Bur roughs, to whom w.d​ you please remember me with great cordiality whenever the chance occurs. He may have told you—& indeed it cannot have needed telling—that you were a very principal subject of our discourse, & of my reiterated enquiries.

It interests me to see in your letter that you have a habit of taking moonlight walks out of Washington: I used to find walks of this kind highly enjoyable, & have frequently indulged in them years ago. In my youth I was living in habits of daily & brotherly intimacy with various painters (Millais, Holman Hunt, &c); & from time to time we w.d​ all sally out, 6 or 7, say towards 11 at night, & pass the whole night, & sometimes the succeeding day   as well, tramping about, & enjoying the varying effects of night, dawn, &c—studied of course with peculiar interest, & directness of observation & purpose, by the painters: sometimes, instead of walking, we w.d​ row up the river from nightfall to day. There is a goodish deal of agreeable country round London: but, unless one lives quite out in the suburbs, it takes miles of walking to get even to the beginning of anything green or rural. I can easily imagine that to walk out of Washington at night "into Virginia or Maryland" is an experience of a very different sort, in point of grandeur & impressiveness. Tho'​ indeed, from some points of view wh.​ you of all men realize most intensely, nothing surely can be more impressive than the unmeasured size   & colossal agglomeration of life in London—none the less felt thro​ the interminable streets when all are asleep, & scarcely a passenger met athwart one's path. The interval when the streets are really deserted to this extent is but brief: I suppose from about 2¾ to 4 a.m. is the most vacant time.

What you say about the insulting & in fact ungrateful treatment wh.​ your poems continue to receive in America is deeply interesting, tho'​ painful. I suppose it is a very general if not universal experience that anything that is at once great & extremely novel encounters for some considerable time much more hostility than acceptance, & so far your experience is not surprising—rather indeed a testimonial, when properly considered, to the great intrinsic value of your writings. But certainly   it does seem that in degree & duration the obduracy of Americans agst.​ your work is something abnormal & unworthy—especially considering the spirit of intense patriotic love & national insight wh.​ pervades your book thro​ & thro.​ That America sh.d​ be so wanting (in this matter at least) in large receptiveness & quick intuition is distressing to those who love her—among whom I may humbly but truly profess myself. It seems as if she were even less capable than others of appreciating great work vital with the very marrow of her bones & corpuscles of her blood: perhaps this very affinity is partly the reason—but at any rate a bad & perverse reason. In this country there are of course very diverse knots of opinion, & schools of thinking & criticism, & to several of these your   works are still an exasperation & an offence: but others accept & exalt you with all readiness of love & delight, & I think I may safely say that it is these wh​ have in their holding the future of English opinion on such matters for some years to come.—But I will say no more on this tack. For myself (with others) who believe in you with the certainty of full conviction, all these considerations are poor & slight: the one thing is the work itself, & the maker of the work, which has a destiny as assured & as limitless as that of any other great product of the soul or of nature.

I have not met Prof.r​ Dowden since last summer (or spring perhaps): he is seldom, I think, out of Ireland.   What I saw of him I liked particularly. He seems an uncommonly young man to be a Professor—less than 30 to look at; & is in no common degree good–looking, pleasant, open, & sound–minded. There are few men, I sh.d​ say, more likely to have their sympathies in literary matters sane & right—guided also by the fullest measure of lettered cultivation. Mrs. Gilchrist I dined with not many weeks ago. She seems to have fairly recovered from a very exhaustive & indeed dangerous illness that oppressed her of late (say from the early autumn of 1870 to the late summer of 1871)—only that she is not so capable as she used to be of continuous mental or bodily strain. It was a pleasure to see her surrounded by her family,   the type of a true mother, guiding & nurturing all aright in her children, mind & body. The eldest son bids fair to have a distinguished & prosperous career as a mining engineer: a younger son is greatly set on being a painter. One of the daughters is just about grown up, the other, I suppose, 10 or 11 years of age.—Mr. J. A. Symonds I don't know personally; but, about the time when my selection from your Poems came out, he wrote to me (2 or 3 letters) showing himself to have been for some while past one of your very ardent admirers. Tennyson I have known for years, & like much: I think him deep–hearted & high–minded, tho​ it may be true (as has often been said, & sometimes not in a kindly   spirit) that he is somewhat too self–centred, & morbidly sensitive. He hates all the vulgarizing aspects of fame, & some people find him present a very obtuse exterior to their advances or approaches: for myself, I can truly say my experience is the direct contrary. I think you & he w.d​ understand each other, & feel on a very friendly footing. Tennyson (as I dare say you know) is a remarkably fine manly person to look at, with a noble mould of face, & very powerful frame. He must be 6 foot 1 in height, I sh.d​ suppose—but not now so erect as in his prime.—If you do at any time come to England, to see Tennyson or others, I need not say what a delight it w.d​ be to me to know you personally—& several of my friends w.d​ amply   share my feeling.

My vol.​ of Selections from American Poets doesn't seem likely to be published yet awhile. It has been completed for mo.s​ past: but, as it is one vol.​ of a series, & others of the vol.s​ are in course of printing, the printer may probably leave it over for a few mo.s​ to come. I have in the briefest terms dedicated it to you (& hope you won't object). Any other dedication—at least, if to any one on your side of the Atlantic—wd​ be a fatuity.

Believe me honoured to be called your friend, W. M. Rossetti

I have no doubt you will have felt sorrow as I did—tho​ indeed   sorrow is not fully the right word, nor the right emotion—at reading lately of the death of Mazzini. I, who am ¾ Italian in blood, have naturally a strong feeling on these subjects: & I regard Mazzini as the noblest of patriots, & the man to whom more than any other single person not even excepting Garibaldi, the lovers of Italian unity are beholden. It is often a pleasure to me to reflect that, with all the miserable oppression & depression under wh.​ she has so long been labouring Italy has after all produced the 3 greatest public men (to my thinking such) of the last 100 years in Europe—

1. Napoleon I, the greatest genius as a conqueror & ruler (I suppose any one is to be allowed to ad mire him enormously, whether one approves him or not—& to call him a Frenchman, or anything save an Italian, is meaningless)

2. Mazzini, the greatest of ideal statesmen—patriots—

3. Garibaldi, the greatest & most flawless personal hero.