flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by
a death-bed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe
is laid close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph)
and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the
carriage together--I am horribly weak about such things--I can't look
on the earth-side of death--I flinch from corpses and graves, and never
meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards
I look _over_ death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that
it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the
poor stricken mother sat so calmly--not to drop from the seat. Well--all
this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars in the
old strain of thought--the antique words get muddled and blurred with
warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome
is spoilt to me--there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's
associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying
some things--the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to the
general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue
sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins.
. . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do
work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellent
music at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K.) once or twice a week, and have Fanny
Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together.
This is pleasant. I like her decidedly.

'If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept out
of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . .'



Rome: March 29.