we are; I water-curing, assiduously walking on the sunny mountains, drinking of the clear wells, not to speak of wet wrappages, solitary sad steepages, and other singular procedures; my Wife not meddling for her own behoof, but only seeing me do it.  These have been three of the idlest weeks I ever spent, and there is still one to come:  after which we go northward to Lancashire, and across the Border where my good old Mother still expects me; and so, after some little visiting and dawdling, hope to find ourselves home again before September end, and the inexpressible Glass Palace with its noisy inanity have taken itself quite away again.  It was no increase of ill-health that drove me hither, rather the reverse; but I have long been minded to try this thing:  and now I think the result will be,—­zero pretty nearly, and one imagination the less.  My long walks, my strenuous idleness, have certainly done me good; nor has the “water” done me any ill, which perhaps is much to say of it.  For the rest, it is a strange quasi-monastic—­godless and yet devotional—­way of life which human creatures have here, and useful to them beyond doubt.  I foresee, this “Water Cure,” under better forms, will become the Ramadhan of the overworked unbelieving English in time coming; an institution they were dreadfully in want of, this long while!—­We had Twisleton* here (often speaking of you), who is off to America again; will sail, I think, along with this Letter; a semi-articulate but solid-minded worthy man.  We have other officials and other litterateurs (T.B.  Macaulay in his hired villa for one):  but the mind rather shuns than seeks them, one finds solitary quasi-devotion preferable, and [Greek], as Pindar had it!

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* The late Hon. Edward Twisleton, a man of high character and
large attainments, and with a personal disposition that won the
respect and affection of a wide circle of friends on both sides
of the Atlantic.   He was the author of a curious and learned
treatise entitled “The Tongue not Essential to Speech,” and his
remarkable volume on “The Handwriting of Junius” seems to have
effectually closed a long controversy.
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Richard Milnes is married, about two weeks ago, and gone to Vienna for a jaunt.  His wife, a Miss Crewe (Lord Crewe’s sister), about forty, pleasant, intelligent, and rather rich:  that is the end of Richard’s long first act.  Alfred Tennyson, perhaps you heard, is gone to Italy with his wife:  their baby died or was dead-born; they found England wearisome:  Alfred has been taken up on the top of the wave, and a good deal jumbled about since you were here.  Item Thackeray; who is coming over to lecture to you:  a mad world, my Masters!  Your Letter to Mazzini was duly despatched; and we hear from him that he will write to you, on the subject required, without delay.  Browning and his wife, home from Florence, are both in London at