hat I hear and what the
'Literary Gazette' hears from Paris is by no means the same thing. I
hear Hebrew while the 'Gazette' hears Dutch--a miracle befitting the
subject, or what was once considered to be the subject (I beg Professor
Faraday's pardon), before it was annihilated.

How pert women can be, can't they, Mr. Chorley? particularly when they
are safe among the mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane-trees
joined at top. I won't go on to offer myself as 'spiritual correspondent
to the "Athenaeum,"' though I have a modest conviction that it might
increase your sale considerably. Ah, tread us down! put us out! You will
have some trouble with us yet. The opposition Czar of St. Petersburg
supports us, be it known, and Louis Napoleon comes to us for oracles.
The King of Holland is going mad gently in our favour--quite absorbed,
says an informant. But I won't quote kings. It is giving oneself too
great a disadvantage.

We stayed in Florence till it was oven-heat, and then we came here,
where it was fire-heat for a short time, though with cool nights
comparatively, by means of which we lived, comparatively too. Now it is
cool by day and night. You know these beautiful hills, the green rushing
river which keeps them apart, the chestnut woods, the sheep-walks and
goat-walks, the villages on the peaks of the mountains like wild eagles;
the fresh, unworn, uncivilised, world-before-the-flood look of
everything? If you don't know it, you ought to know it. Come and know
it--do! We have a spare bedroom which opens its door of itself at the
thought of you, and if you can trust yourself so far from home, try for
our sakes. Come and look in our faces and learn us more by heart, and
see whether we are not two friends. I am so very sorry for your
increased anxiety about your sister. I scarcely know how to cheer you,
or, rather, to attempt such a thing, but it did strike me that she was
full of life when I saw her. It may be better with her than your fears,
after all. If you would come to us, you would be here in two hours from
Leghorn; and there's a telegraph at Leghorn--at Florence. Think of it,
do. The Storys are at the top of the hill; you know Mr. and Mrs. Story.
She and I go backward and forward on donkeyback to tea-drinking and
gossiping at one another's houses, and our husbands hold the reins. Also
Robert and I make excursions, he walking as slowly as he can to keep up
with my donkey. When the donkey trots we are more e