the cicale sing all day, and the beautiful mountains stand close around, keeping us fresh with shadows.  Penini thinks he is in Eden—­at least he doesn’t think otherwise.  We have a garden and an arbour, and the fireflies light us up at nights.  With all this, I am sorry for Florence.  Florence was horribly hot, and pleasant notwithstanding.  We hated cutting the knot of friends we had there—­bachelor friends, Isa, who came to us for coffee and smoking!  I was gracious and permitted the cigar (as you were not present), and there were quantities of talk, controversy, and confidences evening after evening.  One of our very favourite friends, Frederick Tennyson, is gone to England, or was to have gone, for three months.  Mr. Lytton had a reception on the terrace of his villa at Bellosguardo the evening before our last in Florence, and we were all bachelors together there, and I made tea, and we ate strawberries and cream and talked spiritualism through one of the pleasantest two hours that I remember.  Such a view!  Florence dissolving in the purple of the hills; and the stars looking on.  Mr. Tennyson was there, Mr. Powers, and M. Villari[25], an accomplished Sicilian, besides our young host and ourselves.  How we ’set down’ Faraday for his ‘arrogant and insolent letter,’ and what stories we told, and what miracles we swore to!  Oh, we are believers here, Isa, except Robert, who persists in wearing a coat of respectable scepticism—­so considered—­though it is much out of elbows and ragged about the skirts.  If I am right, you will none of you be able to disbelieve much longer—­a, new law, or a new development of law, is making way everywhere.  We have heard much—­more than I can tell you in a letter.  Imposture is absolutely out of the question, to speak generally; and unless you explain the phenomena by ’a personality unconsciously projected’ (which requires explanation of itself), you must admit the spirit theory.  As to the simpler forms of the manifestation (it is all one manifestation), the ‘turning-tables,’ I was convinced long before Faraday’s letter that many of the amateur performances were from involuntary muscular action—­but what then?  These are only imitations of actual phenomena.  Faraday’s letter does not meet the common fact of tables being moved and lifted without the touch of a finger.  It is a most arrogant letter and singularly inconclusive.  Tell me any facts you may hear.  Mr. Kinney, the American Minister at the Court of Turin, had arrived at Florence a few days before we quitted it, and he and his wife helped us to spend our last evening at Casa Guidi.  He is cultivated and high-minded.  I like him much; and none the less that he brings hopeful accounts of the state of Piedmont, of the progress of the people, and good persistency of the King.  It makes one’s heart beat with the sense that all is not over with our poor Italy.