[Rome:] 43 Bocca di Leone:  December 27, [1853].

My dearest Fanny,—­I can’t judge of your ‘obstacles,’ of course, but as to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome and Civita (Castellana or Vecchia), there’s certainly not room for even a dream of it.  There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came, except for exacting invalids.  I, for instance, have been kept in the house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas Day, when I was able to get to St. Peter’s) by tramontana; but there has been sun on most days of cold, and nothing has been severe as cold.  The hard weather came in November, before we arrived.  I was out yesterday, and may be to-day, perhaps.  ’Judge ye!’...

You bid me write.  But to what end, if you are here on New Year’s Day? 
There’s not time for a letter.

And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as you are not actually of the race of Medes and Persians, you might possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines.  Oh, a provoking person or persons you are, since you and Ellen Heaton are plural henceforth!  No, I won’t include her. You are singular, by your own confession, on this occasion.  And, instead of Christmas solemnisations, I shall take to reading the Commination Service over you if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable, snowed-up roads around Rome.  You really might as well object to coming on account of the heat!...

I thank you very much for meaning to bring my goods for me.  I wish I could have seen your pictures before they took to themselves golden wings and fled away.  Is it true, really, that you think to exhibit in London Penini’s portrait at the piano, as Sophie Eckley tells me?  I shall like to hear that you succeed in that.

I see her every day almost, if not quite.  Nobody is like her.  And there are quantities of people here to choose from.  I have not taken heart and ‘an evening for reception’ yet, but we have had ‘squeezes’ of more or less stringency.  Miss Ogle is here—­and her family, of course, for she is young—­the author of ‘A Lost Love,’ that very pretty book; and she is natural and pleasing.  Do you know Lady Oswald, and her daughter and son?  She is Lady Elgin’s sister-in-law, and brought a letter to me from Lady Augusta Bruce.  Then the Marshalls found us out through Mr. De Vere (her cousin), and in the name of Alfred Tennyson (their intimate friend).  Mrs. Marshall was a Miss Spring Rice, and is very refined in all senses.  Refinement expresses the whole woman.  Yes, there are some nice people here—­nice people; it’s the word.  Nobody as near to me as Mr. Page, whom we often see, I am happy to say, and who has just presented the world (only that is generally said of the lady) with a son, and is on the point of presenting said world with a Venus. Will you come to see?  I wonder....