very
merry and agreeable. He is travelling with Lord and Lady Somers, and
Lord Somers being laid up with an attack of malaria fever, Layard had a
day to spare. Craven, who was Lord Normanby's Secretary of Legation in
Paris, now lives at Naples, and is married to a French lady. He is very
hospitable and hearty, and seemed to have vague ideas that something
might be done in a pretty little private theatre he has in his house. He
told me of Fanny Kemble and the Sartoris's being here. I have also heard
of Thackeray's being here--I don't know how truly. Lockhart is here,
and, I fear, very ill. I mean to go and see him.

We are living in the old hotel, which is not now kept by Meloni, who has
retired. I don't know whether you recollect an apartment at the top of
the house, to which we once ran up with poor Roche to see the horses
start in the race at the Carnival time? That is ours, in which I at
present write. We have a large back dining-room, a handsome front
drawing-room, looking into the Piazza del Popolo, and three front
bedrooms, all on a floor. The whole costs us about four shillings a day
each. The hotel is better kept than ever. There is a little kitchen to
each apartment where the dinner is kept hot. There is no house
comparable to it in Paris, and it is better than Mivart's. We start for
Florence, post, on Friday morning, and I am bargaining for a carriage to
take us on to Venice.

Edward is an excellent servant, and always cheerful and ready for his
work. He knows no Italian, except the names of a few things, but French
is far more widely known here now than in our time. Neither is he an
experienced courier as to roads and so forth; but he picks up all that I
want to know, here and there, somehow or other. I am perfectly pleased
with him, and would rather have him than an older hand. Poor dear Roche
comes back to my mind though, often.

I have written to engage the courier from Turin into France, from
_Tuesday, the 6th December_. This will bring us home some two days after
the tenth, probably. I wrote to Charley from Naples, giving him his
choice of meeting me at Lyons, in Paris, or at Boulogne. I gave him full
instructions what to do if he arrived before me, and he will write to me
at Turin saying where I shall find him. I shall be a day or so later
than I supposed as the nearest calculation I could make when I wrote to
him; but his waiting for me at an hotel will not matter.

We have had delightful weather,