nce--the dearer the farther.

We slept at Dijon, where Robert, in a passion of friendship, went out
twice to stand before Maison Milsand (one of the shows of the town), and
muse and bless the threshold. Little did he dream that Milsand was there
at that moment, having been called suddenly from Paris by the dangerous
illness of his mother. So we miss our friend; but we shall not, I think,
altogether, for he talked of following us to the sea, Sarianna says, and
even if he is restrained from doing this, we shall pass some little time
in Paris on our return, and so see him....

Mrs. Jameson is here, but goes on Saturday to England.

[_Incomplete_]

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

2 Rue de Perry, Le Havre, Maison Versigny:
July 23, 1858 [postmark].

My dearest Fanny,-- ... I gave you an account of our journey to Paris,
which I won't write over again, especially as you may have read some
things like it. In Paris we remained a fortnight except a day, and I
liked it as I always like Paris, for which I have a decided fancy. And
yet I did nothing, except in one shop, and in a fiacre driving round and
round, and sometimes at a restaurant, dining round and round. But Paris
is so full of life--murmurs so of the fountain of intellectual youth for
ever and ever--that rolling up the rue de Rivoli (much more the
Boulevards) suggests a quicker beat of the fancy's heart; and I like
it--I like it. The architectural beauty is wonderful. Give me Venice on
water, Paris on land--each in its way is a dream city. If one had but
the sun there--such a sun as one has in Italy! Or if one had no lungs
here--such lungs as are in me. But no. Under actual circumstances
something different from Paris must satisfy me. Also, when all's said
and sighed. I love Italy--I love my Florence. I love that 'hole of a
place,' as Father Prout called it lately--with all its dust, its
cobwebs, its spiders even, I love it, and with somewhat of the kind of
blind, stupid, respectable, obstinate love which people feel when they
talk of 'beloved native lands.' I feel this for Italy, by mistake for
England. Florence is my chimney-corner, where I can sulk and be happy.
But you haven't come to that yet. In spite of which, you will like the
Baths of Lucca, just as you like Florence, for certain advantages--for
the exquisite beauty, and the sense of abstraction from the vulgarities
and vexations of the age, which is the secret of the s