ress Miss
Wilson, whose name was Dorothy.]

Saturday, December 13th, 1845.

Thank you, dear Hal, again, for those elastic circles. Now that I know
how to use them, I am extremely charmed with them. In my sister's letter
to me she gave me no further detail of her health than merely to state
that she had injured herself seriously by sitting for hours on the cold
stones of St. Peter's....

You know, dear Harriet, that few women have ever had such an education
as to enable them fully to appreciate the classical associations of
Italy (by-the-by, do you remember that one brief and rather desponding
notice of female education in "Arnold's Letters"?); and as for me, I am
as ignorant as dirt, so that all that full and delightful spring of
pleasure which a fine classical knowledge opens to the traveller in the
heroic lands is utterly sealed to me. I have not even put my lips to the
brink of it. I have always thought that no form of human enjoyment could
exceed that of a thorough scholar, such a one as Arnold, for instance,
visiting Rome for the first time.

It is not, however, from recollection, association, or reflection that I
look to deriving pleasure in Italy, but from my vivid perceptive
faculties, from my senses (my nose, perhaps, excepted), and in the mere
beauty that remains from the past, and abides in the present, in those
Southern lands. You know what a vividly perceptive nature mine is; and,
indeed, so great is my enjoyment from things merely material that the
idea of ever being parted from this dear body of mine, through which I
perceive them and see, hear, smell, touch, and taste so much exquisite
pleasure, makes me feel rather uncomfortable. My spirit seems to me the
decidedly inferior part of me, and, compared with my body, which is, at
any rate, a good machine of its sort, almost a little contemptible,
decidedly not good of its sort. I sometimes feel inclined to doubt which
is the immortal; for I have hitherto suffered infinitely more from a
defective spirit than from what St. Paul calls "this body of
corruption."

My dear Harriet, if I get a chance to get into the waterfall at Tivoli,
you may depend upon it I will; because just at such times I have a
perfectly immortal faith in my mortality. Good-bye.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

Mon