ing stronger and stronger, and
where it is to stop I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than
at any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of
the place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it
draws you, raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its
keenness--sheathed in Italian sunshine--think what that must be! And
the beauty and the solitude--for with a few paces we get free of
the habitations of men--all is delightful to me. What is peculiarly
beautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes of the mountains.
They are a multitude--and yet there is no likeness. None, except where
the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the
rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that
bare peak which tilts against the sky--nor like the serpent-twine of
another which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. . . .'

She writes again:

Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49).

'. . . I have performed a great exploit--ridden on a donkey five miles
deep into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not
far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with
Baby) on other donkies,--guides of course. We set off at eight in the
morning, and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle,
I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour
for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains could
have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one
could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted
torrents--above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyond
what you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the
ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful,
satisfied us wholly, as we looked round on the world of innumerable
mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea--and not a human habitation.
. . .'

The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, might
refer to this or to a somewhat later period.

'If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved
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,