as Wiedeman. I even went (to
prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six
miles there and six miles back, perpendicularly up and down. Oh, it
almost slew me of course! I could not stir for days after. But who
wouldn't see heaven and die? Such a vision of divine scenery, such as,
in England, the best dreamers do not dream of! As we came near home I
said to Mr. Lytton, who was on horseback, 'I am dying. How are you?' To
which he answered, 'I thought a quarter of an hour ago I could not keep
up to the end, but now I feel better.' This from a young man just
one-and-twenty! He is delicate, to be sure, but still you may imagine
that the day's work was not commonly fatiguing. The guides had to lead
the horses and donkeys. It was like going up and down a wall, without
the smoothness. No road except in the beds of torrents. Robert
pretended to be not tired, but, of course (as sensible people say of the
turning tables), nobody believed a word of it. It was altogether a
supernatural pretension, and very impertinent in these enlightened days.

Mr. and Mrs. Story were of our party. He is the son of Judge Story and
full of all sorts of various talent. And she is one of those cultivated
and graceful American women who take away the reproach of the national
want of refinement. We have seen much of them throughout the summer.
There has been a close communion of tea-drinking between the houses, and
as we are all going to Rome together, this pleasure is not a past
one....

We still point to Paris. Ah! you disapprove of Paris, I see, but we must
try the experiment. What I am afraid of is simply the climate. I doubt
whether I shall stand two winters running as far north as Paris, but if
I _can't_, we must come south again. Then I love Italy. Oh! if it were
not for the distance between Italy and England, we should definitively
settle here at once. We shall be in England, by the way, next summer for
pleasure and business, having, or about to have, two books to see
through the press. Not _prose_, Mr. Martin. I'm lost--devoted to the
infernal gods of rhyming. 'It's my fate,' as a popular poet said when
going to be married....

(We go on Monday. Write to Florence for the next month.)

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence: autumn, 1853.]

My dearest Sarianna,--I shall not be able to write very much to-day, for
Robert is in haste, and we are both overwhelmed with different
enga