or dew ever falls there during the summer.  A ’circulating library’ ‘which doesn’t give out books,’ and ’a refined and intellectual Italian society’ (I quote Murray for that phrase) which ‘never reads a book through’ (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman’s mother, who has lived in Fano seven years), complete the advantages of the place, yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino’s is worth going all that way to see.[180] By a happy accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married her daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning as far as I could apprehend.  She is a very intelligent and vivacious person, and having been used to the best French society, bears but ill this exile from the common civilities of life.  I wish Dr. Wiseman, of whose childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride, would ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop’s palace in Westminster; there would be no hesitation, I fancy, in her acceptance of the invitation.  Agreeable as she and her daughter were, however, we fled from Fano after three days, and, finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what the Italians call ‘un bel giro.’  So we went to Ancona, a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks and elbowing out the purple tides, beautiful to look upon.  An exfoliation of the rock itself, you would call the houses that seem to grow there, so identical is the colour and character.  I should like to visit Ancona again when there is a little air and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon fish and cold water.  Water, water, was the cry all day long, and really you should have seen me (or you should not have seen me) lying on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense of female vanity, not to say decency, with dishevelled hair at full length, and ’sans gown, sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything,’ except a petticoat and white dressing wrapper.  I said something feebly once about the waiter; but I don’t think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, ’Oh, don’t mind, dear,’ certainly I didn’t mind in the least.  People don’t, I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers.  Never before did I guess what heat was—­that’s sure.  We went to Loreto for a day, back through Ancona, Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there was no fair this year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose, with selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna, back again over the Apennines from Forli.  A ‘bel giro,’ wasn’t it?  Ravenna, where Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to those yearnings.  The churches are wonderful:  holding an atmosphere of purple glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante’s tomb—­well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna.  The very antiquity of the houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches new and