“13 Nov.—­I never was yet, in my life, in such a state of hopeless confusion of letters, drawings, and work:  chiefly because, of course, when one is old, one’s done work seems all to tumble in upon one, and want rearranging, and everything brings a thousand old as well as new thoughts.  My head seems less capable of accounts every year.  I can’t fix my mind on a sum in addition—­it goes off, between seven and nine, into a speculation on the seven deadly sins or the nine muses.  My table is heaped with unanswered letters,—­MS. of four or five different books at six or seven different parts of each,—­sketches getting rubbed out,—­others getting smudged in,—­parcels from Mr. Brown unopened, parcels for Mr. Moore unsent; my inkstand in one place,—­too probably upset,—­my pen in another; my paper under a pile of books, and my last carefully written note thrown into the waste-paper basket.

“3 Dec.—­I’m having nasty foggy weather just now,—­but it’s better than fog in London,—­and I’m really resting a little, and trying not to be so jealous of the flying days.  I’ve a most cumfy room [at the Grand Hotel]—­I’ve gone out of the very expensive one, and only pay twelve francs a day; and I’ve two windows, one with open balcony and the other covered in with glass.  It spoils the look of the window dreadfully, but gives me a view right away to Lido, and of the whole sunrise.  Then the bed is curtained off from rest of room like that [sketch of window and room] with fine flourishing white and gold pillars—­and the black place is where one goes out of the room beside the bed.

“9 Dec.—­I hope to send home a sketch or two which will show I’m not quite losing my head yet....  I must show at Oxford some reason for my staying so long in Venice.”

Beside studies in the Chapel of St. George, he copied Carpaccio’s “Dream of St. Ursula” which was taken down—­it had been “skied” at the Academy until then—­and placed in the sculpture gallery; and be laboured to produce a facsimile.

“24 Dec.—­I do think St. Ursula’s lips are coming pretty—­and her eyelids—­but oh me, her hair.  Toni, Mr. Brown’s gondolier, says she’s all right—­and he’s a grave and close looking judge, you know.”

Christmas Day was a crisis in his life.  He was attacked by illness; severe pain, followed by a dreamy state in which the vividly realized presence of St. Ursula mingled with memories of his dead lady, whose “spirit” had been shown him a year before by a “medium” met at a country house.  Since then he had watched eagerly for evidences of another life:  and the sense of its conceivability grew upon him, in spite of the doubts which he had entertained of the immortality of the soul.  At last, after a year’s earnest desire for some such assurance, it seemed to come to him.  What others call coincidences, and accidents, and states of mind flashed, for him, into importance; times and seasons, names and symbols, took a vivid meaning.  His intense despondency changed for a while into a singular happiness—­it seemed a renewed health and strength:  and instead of despair, he rejoiced in the conviction of guarding Providences and helpful influences.