and every mile of ground I have travelled over, and every object I have
seen. It is next to impossible, surely, to exaggerate the interest of
Rome; though, I think, it _is_ very possible to find the main source of
interest in the wrong things. Naples disappointed me greatly. The
weather was bad during a great part of my stay there. But if I had not
had mud, I should have had dust, and though I had had sun, I must still
have had the Lazzaroni. And they are so ragged, so dirty, so abject, so
full of degradation, so sunken and steeped in the hopelessness of better
things, that they would make heaven uncomfortable, if they could ever
get there. I didn't expect to see a handsome city, but I expected
something better than that long dull line of squalid houses, which
stretches from the Chiaja to the quarter of the Porta Capuana; and while
I was quite prepared for a miserable populace, I had some dim belief
that there were bright rays among them, and dancing legs, and shining
sun-browned faces. Whereas the honest truth is, that connected with
Naples itself, I have not one solitary recollection. The country round
it charmed me, I need not say. Who can forget Herculaneum and Pompeii?

As to Vesuvius, it burns away in my thoughts, beside the roaring waters
of Niagara, and not a splash of the water extinguishes a spark of the
fire; but there they go on, tumbling and flaming night and day, each in
its fullest glory.

I have seen so many wonders, and each of them has such a voice of its
own, that I sit all day long listening to the roar they make as if it
were in a sea-shell, and have fallen into an idleness so complete, that
I can't rouse myself sufficiently to go to Pisa on the twenty-fifth,
when the triennial illumination of the Cathedral and Leaning Tower, and
Bridges, and what not, takes place. But I have already been there; and
it cannot beat St. Peter's, I suppose. So I don't think I shall pluck
myself up by the roots, and go aboard a steamer for Leghorn. Let me
thank you heartily for the "Keepsake" and the "Book of Beauty." They
reached me a week or two ago. I have been very much struck by two papers
in them--one, Landor's "Conversations," among the most charming,
profound, and delicate productions I have ever read; the other, your
lines on Byron's room at Venice. I am as sure that you wrote them from
your heart, as I am that they found their way immediately to mine.

It delights me to receive such accounts of Maclise's fres