old, till the hot air is sick with them.  To get to the pine forest, which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the exhalations pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante’s tomb ‘without an especial permission from the authorities.’  Quite furious I was about this, and both of us too angry to think of applying:  but we stood at the grated window and read the pathetic inscription as plainly as if we had touched the marble.  We stood there between three and four in the morning, and then went straight on to Florence from that tomb of the exiled poet.  Just what we should have done, had the circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention.  From Forli, the air grew pure and quick again; and the exquisite, almost visionary scenery of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape and colour, the sudden transitions and vital individuality of those mountains, the chestnut forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines, the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents, and the hills, hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if they did it themselves, changing colour in the effort—­of these things I cannot give you any idea, and if words could not, painting could not either.  Indeed, the whole scenery of our journey, except when we approached the coast, was full of beauty.  The first time we crossed the Apennine (near Borgo San Sepolcro) we did it by moonlight, and the flesh was weak, and one fell asleep, and saw things between sleep and wake, only the effects were grand and singular so, even though of course we lost much in the distinctness.  Well, but you will understand from all this that we were delighted to get home—­I was, I assure you.  Florence seemed as cool as an oven after the fire; indeed, we called it quite cool, and I took possession of my own chair and put up my feet on the cushions and was charmed, both with having been so far and coming back so soon.  Three weeks brought us home.  Flush was a fellow traveller of course, and enjoyed it in the most obviously amusing manner.  Never was there so good a dog in a carriage before his time!  Think of Flush, too!  He has a supreme contempt for trees and hills or anything of that kind, and, in the intervals of natural scenery, he drew in his head from the window and didn’t consider it worth looking at; but when the population thickened, and when a village or a town was to be passed through, then his eyes were starting out of his head with eagerness; he looked east, he looked west, you would conclude that he was taking notes or preparing them.  His eagerness to get into the carriage first used to amuse the Italians.  Ah, poor Italy!  I am as mortified as an Italian ought to be.  They have only the rhetoric of patriots and soldiers, I fear!  Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she lies still, and here she lies, eating ices and keeping the feast of the Madonna.  Perdoni! but she has