Since we have been here we have had for a visitor (drawing the advantage from our spare room) Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward’s only son, who is attache at the Florence Legation at this time.  He lost nothing from the test of house-intimacy with either of us—­gained, in fact, much.  Full of all sorts of good and nobleness he really is, and gifted with high faculties and given to the highest aspirations—­not vulgar ambitions, understand—­he will never be a great diplomatist, nor fancy himself an inch taller for being master of Knebworth.[27] Then he is somewhat dreamy and unpractical, we must confess; he won’t do for drawing carts under any sort of discipline.  Such a summer we have enjoyed here, free from burning heats and mosquitos—­the two drawbacks of Italy—­and in the heart of the most enchanting scenery.  Mountains not too grand for exquisite verdure, and just kept from touching by the silver finger of a stream.  I have been donkey-riding, and so has Wiedeman.  I even went (to prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six miles there and six miles back, perpendicularly up and down.  Oh, it almost slew me of course!  I could not stir for days after.  But who wouldn’t see heaven and die?  Such a vision of divine scenery, such as, in England, the best dreamers do not dream of!  As we came near home I said to Mr. Lytton, who was on horseback, ‘I am dying.  How are you?’ To which he answered, ’I thought a quarter of an hour ago I could not keep up to the end, but now I feel better.’  This from a young man just one-and-twenty!  He is delicate, to be sure, but still you may imagine that the day’s work was not commonly fatiguing.  The guides had to lead the horses and donkeys.  It was like going up and down a wall, without the smoothness.  No road except in the beds of torrents.  Robert pretended to be not tired, but, of course (as sensible people say of the turning tables), nobody believed a word of it.  It was altogether a supernatural pretension, and very impertinent in these enlightened days.

Mr. and Mrs. Story were of our party.  He is the son of Judge Story and full of all sorts of various talent.  And she is one of those cultivated and graceful American women who take away the reproach of the national want of refinement.  We have seen much of them throughout the summer.  There has been a close communion of tea-drinking between the houses, and as we are all going to Rome together, this pleasure is not a past one....

We still point to Paris.  Ah! you disapprove of Paris, I see, but we must try the experiment.  What I am afraid of is simply the climate.  I doubt whether I shall stand two winters running as far north as Paris, but if I can’t, we must come south again.  Then I love Italy.  Oh! if it were not for the distance between Italy and England, we should definitively settle here at once.  We shall be in England, by the way, next summer for pleasure and business, having, or about to have, two books to see through the press.  Not prose, Mr. Martin.  I’m lost—­devoted to the infernal gods of rhyming.  ‘It’s my fate,’ as a popular poet said when going to be married....