health, and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, of
how your wife walked here with you, and there with you, as if a wife
with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."'



Florence: Feb. 18 ('50).

'. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live,
and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society
here. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .'



Florence: April 1 ('50).

'. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, just sweeping
through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked out
to see the Duke go by--and just such a door where Tasso stood and where
Dante drew his chair out to sit. Strange to have all that old world life
about us, and the blue sky so bright. . . .'



Venice: June 4 (probably '50).

'. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so
celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of
water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting