colors scream, you don't see them in this aqueous, dim atmosphere.
That is why a benign Providence has made the landscape _aux epinards_. I
think the air here, inside and out, must weigh heavily; it lies on one's
lungs like a sponge. I once went down in a diving-bell when I was a boy;
I have the sensation in this country of being always down in a
diving-bell. The scamp Toniello, whom you may remember as having played
Leporello to my Don Giovanno ever since we were lads, amuses himself
with making love to all the pretty maidens in the village; but, then, I
must not do that--now. They are not very pretty, either. They have very
big teeth, and very long upper lips. Their skins, however, are
admirable. For a horse's skin and a woman's there is no land comparable
to England. It is the country of grooming.

* * * * *

_From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to Lady Gwendolen
Chichester, British Embassy, St. Petersburg._

He laughed at me because I went to church yesterday, and really I only
went because I thought it _right_. We have been here a fortnight, and I
have never been to church at all till yesterday, and you know how very
serious dear Aunt Carrie is. To-day, as it is the second Sunday I have
been here, I thought I ought to go just once, and I did go; but it was
dreadfully pompous and lonely in the big red pew, and the villagers
stared so, and all the little girls of the village giggled, and looked
at me from under their sun-bonnets. Dear Mr. Coate preached a sermon on
Marriage. It was very kind of him; but oh, how I wished he hadn't! When
I got back, Piero was playing billiards with his servant. I wondered
what Mr. Coate would have thought of him. To be sure, English clergymen
have to get used to fast Sundays now, when the country houses are full.
It is such a dear little yew walk to the church from the house here, not
twenty yards long, and all lined with fuchsia. Do you remember it? Even
Piero admits that it is very pretty, only he says it is a vignette
prettiness,--which, I suppose, is true. "You can see no horizon, only a
green wall," he keeps complaining; and his beautiful, lustrous eyes look
as if they were made to gaze through endless fields of light. When I
asked him yesterday what he really thought of England, what do you
suppose he said? He said, "_Mia cara_, I think it would be a most
delightful country if it had one-fifth of its population, one-half of
its houses