alked
gladly to polish myself up, have given my tongue a hybrid way of talking
without thinking: and I say "_ja, ja_," and "_nein_," and "_der, die,
das_," as often as not before such Italian nouns as I have yet captured.
To fall upon a chambermaid who knows French is like coming upon my
native tongue suddenly.

Give me good news of your foot and all that is above it: I am so doubtful
of its being really strong yet; and its willing spirits will overcome it
some day and do it an injury, and hurt my feelings dreadfully at the same
time.

Walk only on one leg whenever you think of me! I tell you truly I am
wonderfully little lonely: and yet my thoughts are constantly away with
you, wishing, wishing,--what no word on paper can ever carry to you. It
shall be at our next meeting!--All yours.

LETTER XXXII.

My Dearest: Florence is still eating up all my time and energies: I
promised you there should be austerity and self-denial in the matter of
letter-writing: and I know you are unselfish enough to expect even less
than I send you.

Girls in the street address compliments to Arthur's complexion:--
"beautiful brown boy" they call him: and he simmers over with vanity, and
wishes he could show them his boating arms, brown up to the shoulder, as
well. Have you noticed that combination in some of the dearest specimens
of young English manhood,--great physical vanity and great mental modesty?
and each as transparently sincere as the other.

The Bargello is an ideal museum for the storage of the best things out of
the Middle Ages. It opens out of splendid courtyards and staircases, and
ranges through rooms which have quite a feudal gloom about them; most of
these are hung with bad late tapestries (too late at least for my taste),
so that the gloom is welcome and charming, making even "Gobelins" quite
bearable. I find quite a new man here to admire--Pollaiolo, both painter
and sculptor, one of the school of "passionate anatomists," as I call
them, about the time of Botticelli, I fancy. He has one bust of a young
Florentine which equals Verocchio on the same ground, and charms me even
more. Some of his subjects are done twice over, in paint and bronze: but
he is more really a sculptor, I think, and merely paints his piece into a
picture from its best point of view.

Verocchio's idea of David is charming: he is a saucy fellow who has gone
in for it for the fun of the thing--knew he could bring down a hawk with
his cata