seen me catch a swell brigand on the nose with a
handful of very large confetti every time we met him. It was the best
thing I have ever done. "The Chimes" are nothing to it.

Anxiously expecting you, I am ever,

Dear Georgy,
Yours most affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Mitton.]

NAPLES, _Monday, February 17th, 1845._

MY DEAR MITTON,

This will be a hasty letter, for I am as badly off in this place as in
America--beset by visitors at all times and seasons, and forced to dine
out every day. I have found, however, an excellent man for me--an
Englishman, who has lived here many years, and is well acquainted with
_the people_, whom he doctored in the bad time of the cholera, when the
priests and everybody else fled in terror.

Under his auspices, I have got to understand the low life of Naples
(among the fishermen and idlers) almost as well as I understand the do.
do. of my own country; always excepting the language, which is very
peculiar and extremely difficult, and would require a year's constant
practice at least. It is no more like Italian than English is to Welsh.
And as they don't say half of what they mean, but make a wink or a kick
stand for a whole sentence, it's a marvel to me how they comprehend each
other. At Rome they speak beautiful Italian (I am pretty strong at that,
I believe); but they are worse here than in Genoa, which I had
previously thought impossible.

It is a fine place, but nothing like so beautiful as people make it out
to be. The famous bay is, to my thinking, as a piece of scenery,
immeasurably inferior to the Bay of Genoa, which is the most lovely
thing I have ever seen. The city, in like manner, will bear no
comparison with Genoa. But there is none in Italy that will, except
Venice. As to houses, there is no palace like the Peschiere for
architecture, situation, gardens, or rooms. It is a great triumph to me,
too, to find how cheap it is. At Rome, the English people live in dirty
little fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, with not one room as large as
your own drawing-room, and pay, commonly, seven or eight pounds a week.

I was a week in Rome on my way here, and saw the Carnival, which is
perfectly delirious, and a great scene for a description. All the
ancient part of Rome is wonderful and impressive in the extreme. Far
beyond the possibility of exaggeration as to th