f those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am
certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate
Angelico's picture with the remembrance of you rather than the
presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two
days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable
east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less
comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to
call it _cold_, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable;
which set us both mourning over our 'situation' at the Collegio, where
one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest
from the 'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we shall
be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have
seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or
_spoken_ to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and
caught us reading, sighing, yawning over 'Nicolo de' Lapi,' a romance
by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it
'excellent, tres beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which,
of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and
national susceptibilities by a doubt even. _I_, not being so humane,
thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the
rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest,
heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not,
_don't_. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law
imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his
zeal for Italy and against Eugene Sue, tried to persuade me at first
(this was before the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it
wasn't so bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on;
but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even
his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar
to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though
we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two
volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe
now--the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight
into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations,
translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English
writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem
dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories--n