ingloriously, and let Robert finish the course alone while I rested on a
bench: aspiration is not everything, either in literature or
lighthouses, you know, let us be ever so 'insolvent.'

Well, and since we left Turin, everywhere in Italy we have found summer,
summer--not a fire have we needed even in Florence. Such mornings, such
evenings, such walkings out in the dusk, such sunsets over the Arno!
ah, Mr. Kenyon, you in England forget what life is in this out-of-door
fresh world, with your cloistral habits and necessities! I assure you I
can't help fancying that the winter is over and gone, the past looks so
cold and black in the warm light of the present. We have had some rain,
but at night, and only thundery frank rains which made the next day
warmer, and I have all but lost my cough, and am feeling very well and
very happy.

Oh, yes, it made me glad to see our poor darling Florence again; I do
love Florence when all's said against it, and when Robert (demoralised
by Paris) has said most strongly that the place is dead, and dull, and
flat, which it is, I must confess, particularly to our eyes fresh from
the palpitating life of the Parisian boulevards, where we could scarcely
find our way to Prichard's for the crowd during our last fortnight
there. Poor Florence, so dead, as Robert says, and as we both feel, so
trodden flat in the dust of the vineyards by these mules of Austria and
these asses of the Papacy: good heavens! how long are these things to
endure? I do love Florence, when all's said. The very calm, the very
dying stillness is expressive and touching. And then our house, our
tables, our chairs, our carpets, everything looking rather better for
our having been away! Overjoyed I was to feel myself _at home_ again!
our Italians so pleased to see us, Wiedeman's nurse rushing in, kissing
my lips away almost, and seizing on the child, 'Dio mio, come è bellino!