s of the Court life of
Queen Catharine,* and of the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of his
letters dwell especially on these early historical associations: on the
strange sense of reopening the ancient chronicle which he had so deeply
studied fifty years before. The very phraseology of the old Italian
text, which I am certain he had never glanced at from that distant time,
is audible in an account of the massacre of San Zenone, the scene of
which he has been visiting. To the same correspondent he says that
his two hours' drive to Asolo 'seemed to be a dream;' and again, after
describing, or, as he thinks, only trying to describe some beautiful
feature of the place, 'but it is indescribable!'

* Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus.

A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, is in part a
fitting sequel to that which he had written to her from the same spot,
eleven years before.

'. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my old
Albergo,--ruinous with earthquake--is down and done with--but few
novelties are observable--except the regrettable one that the silk
industry has been transported elsewhere--to Cornuda and other places
nearer the main railway. No more Pippas--at least of the silk-winding
sort!

'But the pretty type is far from extinct.

'Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; and
the sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago showed
pomegranates and figs and chestnuts,--walnuts and apples all rioting
together in full glory,--all this is daily disappearing. I say nothing
of the olive and the vine. I find the Turret rather the worse for
careful weeding--the hawks which used to build there have been "shot for
food"--and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; still, things
are the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, when--as I
suppose--we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . .'

In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks the
old keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for what
living things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to the
lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old
power of attracting them.

On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some preliminary
description:

Then--such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, or
_approximate_ view at least, without its story. Autumn is now painting al