rful airy apartment with a fine view of the
hills of Santa Fiora, and with very pretty arabesques in fresco on the
walls of all the rooms, some so very artistic that I made sketches of
them. In these old cities many of the palaces and houses are decorated
with that artistic taste which formerly prevailed to such an extent in
Italy, and, which has now yielded, here as elsewhere, to commonplace
modern furniture.

* * * * *

[While we were at Siena, my mother received the following letter
from Lord Brougham, who was a frequent correspondent of hers, but
whose letters are generally too exclusively mathematical for the
general reader. My mother had described the curious horse-races
which are held at Siena every three years, and other mediaeval
customs still prevalent.]

FROM LORD BROUGHAM TO MRS. SOMERVILLE.

COLE HILL, KENT, _Sept. 28th, 1840_.

MY DEAR MRS. SOMERVILLE,

I am much obliged to you for your kind letter which let me know of
your movements. I had not heard of them since I saw the
Fergusons.... We have been here since parliament rose, as I am not
yet at all equal to going to Brougham. My health is now quite
restored; but I shall not soon--nor in all probability ever--recover
the losses I have been afflicted with. I passed the greater part of
last winter in Provence, expecting some relief from change of scene
and from the fine climate; but I came back fully worse than when I
went. In fact, I did wrong in struggling at first, which I did to be
able to meet parliament in January last. If I had yielded at once, I
would have been better. I hope and trust they sent you a book I
published two years ago; I mean the "Dissertations," of which one is
on the "Principia," and designed to try how far it may be taught to
persons having but a very moderate stock of mathematics; also, if
possible, to keep alive the _true taste_ (as I reckon it) in
mathematics, which modern analysis has a little broken in upon.
Assuming you to have got the book, I must mention that there are
some intolerable errors of the press left, such as.... Excuse my
troubling you with these errata, and impute it to my wish that you
should not suppose me to have written the nonsense which these pages
seem to prove. By the way, it is a curious proof of university
prejudice, that though the Cambridge men admit