e
and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a 'bambina' and
frightened without cause, were as comforting as the salutation of
angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever since, and we have seen
him every day; he came to doctor and remained to talk. A very singular
person, of whom the world tells a thousand and one tales, you know,
but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness
and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing towards us.
Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennent's, and since has
crossed paths with him on various points of Europe. The first time I
saw him was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation
in Italy. Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet
a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with learned
associations and vivid combinations of fancy and experience--having
seen all the ends of the earth and the men thereof, and possessing the
art of talk and quotation to an amusing degree. In another week or
two he will be at Rome.... How graphically you give us your Oxford
student! Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner's, and if you
had called it, in the manner of the Master, 'A Rock Limpet,' we
should have recognised in it the corresponding type of the gifted and
eccentric writer in question. Very eloquent he is, I agree at once,
and true views he takes of Art in the abstract, true and elevating. It
is in the application of connective logic that he breaks away from one
so violently.... We are expecting our books by an early vessel, and
are about to be very busy, building up a rococo bookcase of carved
angels and demons. Also we shall get up curtains, and get down bedroom
carpets, and finish the remainder of our furnishing business, now
that the hot weather is at an end. I say 'at an end,' though the glass
stands at seventy. As to the 'war,' _that_ is rather different, it is
painful to feel ourselves growing gradually cooler and cooler on the
subject of Italian patriotism, valour, and good sense; but the process
is inevitable. The child's play between the Livornese and our Grand
Duke provokes a thousand pleasantries. Every now and then a day is
fixed for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time a shower
has come and put it off. Two Sundays ago Florence was to have been
'sacked' by Leghorn, when a drizzle came and saved us. You think this
a bad joke of mine or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I