divided from my family, and
pursuits which grew on me every day. However, I tried to make the best
of it, and have gained both health and pleasure.

"In spite of scanty communications from England (owing to the
uncertainty of my position), a word or two concerning you and your dear
Wife have reached me. Lately it has often occurred to me, that the sight
of the Bay of Naples, of the beautiful coast from that to this place,
and of Rome itself, all bathed in summer sunshine, and green with spring
foliage, would be some consolation to her. [29] Pray give her my love.

"I have been two days here; and almost the first thing I did was to
visit the Protestant burial-ground, and the graves of those I knew when
here before. But much as being now alone here, I feel the difference,
there is no scene where Death seems so little dreadful and miserable as
in the lonelier neighborhoods of this old place. All one's impressions,
however, as to that and everything else, appear to me, on reflection,
more affected than I had for a long time any notion of, by one's own
isolation. All the feelings and activities which family, friends and
occupation commonly engage, are turned, here in one's solitude, with
strange force into the channels of mere observation and contemplation;
and the objects one is conversant with seem to gain a tenfold
significance from the abundance of spare interest one now has to bestow
on them. This explains to me a good deal of the peculiar effect that
Italy has always had on me: and something of that artistic enthusiasm
which I remember you used to think so singular in Goethe's _Travels_.
Darley, who is as much a brooding hermit in England as here, felt
nothing but disappointment from a country which fills me with childish
wonder and delight.

"Of you I have received some slight notice from Mrs. Strachey; who is
on her way hither; and will (she writes) be at Florence on the 15th, and
here before the end of the month. She notices having received a Letter
of yours which had pleased her much. She now proposes spending the
summer at Sorrento, or thereabouts; and if mere delight of landscape and
climate were enough, Adam and Eve, had their courier taken them to that
region, might have done well enough without Paradise,--and not been
tempted, either, by any Tree of Knowledge; a kind that does not flourish
in the Two Sicilies.

"The ignorance of the Neapolitans, from the highest to the lowest, is
very eminent; and excites