magnificent shows and places. All these things
are only to me an illuminated margin on the text of my inward life.
Earlier, they would have been more. Art is not important to me now.
I like only what little I find that is transcendently good, and even
with that feel very familiar and calm. I take interest in the state
of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them. I see
the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But
I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in Europe; the
tide of things does not wash through them as violently as with us, and
they have time to run in the tread-mill of system. Still, they serve
this great future which I shall not live to see. I must be born again.

TO R.W.E.

_Florence, June_ 20, 1847.--I have just come hither from Rome. Every
minute, day and night, there is something to be seen or done at Rome,
which we cannot bear to lose. We lived on the Corso, and all night
long, after the weather became fine, there was conversation or music
before my window. I never seemed really to sleep while there, and now,
at Florence, where there is less to excite, and I live in a more quiet
quarter, I feel as if I needed to sleep all the time, and cannot rest
as I ought, there is so much to do.

I now speak French fluently, though not correctly, yet well enough
to make my thoughts avail in the cultivated society here, where it
is much spoken. But to know the common people, and to feel truly in
Italy, I ought to speak and understand the spoken Italian well, and
I am now cultivating this sedulously. If I remain, I shall have, for
many reasons, advantages for observation and enjoyment, such as are
seldom permitted to a foreigner.

I forgot to mention one little thing rather interesting. At the
_Miserere_ of the Sistine chapel, I sat beside Goethe's favorite
daughter-in-law, Ottilia, to whom I was introduced by Mrs. Jameson.

TO R.F.F.

_Florence, July_ 1, 1847.--I do not wish to go through Germany in
a hurried way, and am equally unsatisfied to fly through Italy; and
shall, therefore, leaving my companions in Switzerland, take a servant
to accompany me, and return hither, and hence to Rome for the autumn,
perhaps the winter. I should always suffer the pain of Tantalus
thinking of Rome, if I could not see it more thoroughly than I have
as yet even begun to; for it was all _outside_ the two months, just
finding out where objects were. I had on