“We contemplate moving southwards in the spring, and if we go to Italy and come near Florence, we shall assuredly make a detour and come and see you.  Polly wants to see Arezzo and Perugia.  And I suppose we can still get a vetturino to take us that way to Rome?  Don’t want railways, if to be avoided.  I don’t think we can get away before March, for my researches are so absorbing, that, if health holds out, I must go on, if not, we shall pack up earlier.  The worst of Lent is that one gets no theatres, and precisely because we never go to the theatre in London, we hugely enjoy it abroad.  Yesterday we took the child of a friend of ours to a morning performance of the pantomime, and are utterly knocked up in consequence.  Somehow or other abroad the theatre agrees with us.  Polly sends the kindest remembrances to you and your wife.  Whenever you want anything done in London, consider me an idle man.

“Ever yours faithfully,

“G.H.  LEWES.”

* * * * *

And on the 28th February, in the same year, accordingly he writes:—­

* * * * *

“Touching our visit to Florence, you may be sure we could not lightly forego such a pleasure.  We start to-morrow, and unless we are recalled by my mother’s health, we calculate being with you about the end of March.  But we shall give due warning of our arrival.  We both look forward to this holiday, and ‘languish for the purple seas;’ though the high winds now howl a threat of anything but a pleasant crossing to Calais. Che!  Che! One must pay for one’s pleasure!  With both of our warmest salutations to you and yours,

“Believe me, yours faithfully,

“G.H.  LEWES.”

* * * * *

The travellers must, however, have reached us some days before the end of March, for I have a letter to my wife from George Eliot, dated from Naples on the 1st of April, 1869, after they had left us.  She writes:—­

* * * * *

“MY DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,—­The kindness which induces you to shelter travellers will make you willing to hear something of their subsequent fate.  And I am the more inclined to send you some news of ourselves because I have nothing dismal to tell.  We bore our long journey better than we dared to expect, for the night was made short by sleep in our large coupe, and during the day we had no more than one headache between us.  Mr. Lewes really looks better, and has lost his twinges.  And though pleasure-seekers are notoriously the most aggrieved and howling inhabitants of the universe, we can allege nothing against our lot here but the persistent coldness of the wind, which is in dangerously sudden contrast with the warmth of the sunshine whenever one gets on the wrong side of a wall.  This prevents us from undertaking any carriage expeditions, which is rather unfortunate, because such expeditions are among