morning and rang my dreams apart.  The Pasquareccia (the fourth) especially has a profound note in it, which may well have thrilled horror to the criminal’s heart.[160] It was ghastly in its effects; dropped into the deep of night like a thought of death.  Often have I said, ’Oh, how ghastly!’ and then turned on my pillow and dreamed a bad dream.  But if the bell founders at Pisa have a merited reputation, let no one say as much for the bellringers.  The manner in which all the bells of all the churches in the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly make you groan in despair of your ears.  The discord is fortunately indescribable.  Well—­but here we are at Florence, the most beautiful of the cities devised by man....

In the meanwhile I have seen the Venus, I have seen the divine Raphaels.  I have stood by Michael Angelo’s tomb in Santa Croce.  I have looked at the wonderful Duomo.  This cathedral!  After all, the elaborate grace of the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive grandeur of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck me with a sense of the sublime in architecture.  At Pisa we say, ’How beautiful!’ here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe.  The mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up—­we feel the weight of them on the soul.  Tesselated marbles (the green treading its elaborate pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy of marble domes.  It struck me as a wonder in architecture.  I had neither seen nor imagined the like of it in any way.  It seemed to carry its theology out with it; it signified more than a mere building.  Tell me everything you want to know.  I shall like to answer a thousand questions.  Florence is beautiful, as I have said before, and must say again and again, most beautiful.  The river rushes through the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it is hard to tell, when you see all by the clear sunset, whether those churches, and houses, and windows, and bridges, and people walking, in the water or out of the water, are the real walls, and windows, and bridges, and people, and churches.  The only difference is that, down below, there is a double movement; the movement of the stream besides the movement of life.  For the rest, the distinctness of the eye is as great in one as in the other....  Remember me to such of my friends as remember me kindly when unreminded by me.  I am very happy—­happier and happier.

ELIBET.

Robert’s best regards to you always.

[Footnote 159:  It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great interest in bells and bell ringing.  The passage omitted below contains an extract from Murray’s Handbook with reference to the bells of Pisa.]

[Footnote 160:  This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.]

To Mrs. Jameson Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, Florence:  August 7, 1847 [postmark].