Here I stop myself with a strong rein.  It is fatal, dear Mr. Ruskin, to write letters on New Year’s day.  One can’t help moralising; one falls on the metaphysical vein unaware.

Forgive me.

We are in Rome you see.  We have been very happy and found rooms swimming all day in sunshine, when there is any sun, and yet not ruinously dear.  I was able to go out on Christmas morning (a wonderful event for me) and hear the silver trumpets in St. Peter’s.  Well, it was very fine.  I never once thought of the Scarlet Lady, nor of the Mortara case, nor anything to spoil the pleasure.  Yes, and I enjoyed it both aesthetically and devotionally, putting my own words to the music.  Was it wise, or wrong?

But we have had and are having some cold, some tramontana, and I have kept house ever since.  Only in Rome there’s always hope of a good warm scirocco.  We talk of seeing Naples before we turn home to our Florence, to keep feast for Dante.

It is delightful to hear of all you are permitted to do for England meanwhile in matters of art, and one of these days we shall go north to take a few happy hours of personal advantage out of it all.  Not this year, however, I think.  We have done duty to the north too lately.  Now it seems to me we have the right (of virtue, in spite of what I said on another page, or rather, because I said it in good human inconsistency), the right to have and hold our Italy in undisturbed possession.  I never feel at home anywhere else, or to live rightly anywhere else at all.  It’s a horrible want of patriotism, of course, only, if I were upon trial, I might say in a low voice a few things to soften the judgment against me on account of that sin.  Ah! we missed you at Havre!  If you had come it would have been something pleasant to remember that detestable place by, besides the salt-water which profited one’s health a little.  We were in Paris too some six weeks in all (besides eight weeks at Havre!) and Paris has a certain charm for me always.  If we had seen you in Paris!  But no, you must have floated past us, close, close, yet we missed you.

A good happy new year we wish to Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, as to yourself, and, dear Mr. Ruskin, to your mother I shall say that my child is developing in a way to make me very contented and thankful.  Yes, I thank God for him more and more, and she can understand that, I know.  His musical faculty is a decided thing, and he plays on the piano quite remarkably for his age (through his father’s instruction) while I am writing this.  He is reading aloud to me an Italian translation of ’Monte Cristo,’ and with a dramatic intelligence which would strike you, as it does perhaps, that I should select such a book for a child of nine years old to read at all.  It’s rather young to be acclimated to French novels, is it not?  But the difficulty of getting Italian books is great, and there’s a good deal in the early part of ‘Monte Cristo,’ the prison part, very attractive.  His voice was full of sobs when poor Dantes was consigned to the Chateau d’If.  “Do you mean to say, mama, that that boy is to stay there all his life?” He made me tell him ’to make him happy,’ as he said.