The first part of our journey this morning was delightful and picturesque; we passed the beautiful lake of Bolsena and Montepulciano, so famous for its wine (il Rei di Vino, as Redi calls it in the Bacco in Toscana).  Later in the day we entered a gloomy and desolate country; and after crossing the rapid and muddy torrent of Rigo, which, as our Guide des Voyageurs wittily informs us, we shall have to cross four times if we are not drowned the third time, we began to ascend the mountainous region which divides the Tuscan from the Roman states—­a succession of wild barren hills, intersected in every direction by deep ravines, and presenting a scene, sublime indeed from its waste and wild grandeur, but destitute of all beauty, interest, magnificence and variety.

I remember the strange emotion which came across me, when—­on the horses stopping to breathe on the summit of a lofty ridge, where all around, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but the same unvarying, miserable, heart-sinking barrenness, without a trace of human habitation, except the black fort or the highest point of Radicofani—­a soft sound of bells came over my ear as if brought upon the wind.  There is something in the sound of bells in the midst of a solitude which is singularly striking, and may be cheering or melancholy, according to the mood in which we may happen to be.

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Florence, April 14.—­I have not written a word since we arrived at Sienna.  What would it avail me to keep a mere journal of suffering?  O that I could change as others do, could forget that such things have been which can never be again! that there were not this tenacity in my heart and soul which clings to the shadow though the substance be gone!

This is not a mere effusion of low spirits; I was never more cheerful.  I have just left a gay party, where Mr. Rogers (whom by special good fortune we meet at every resting-place, and who dined with us to-day) has been entertaining us delightfully.  I disdain low spirits as a mere disease which comes over us, generally from some physical or external cause; to prescribe for them is as easy as to disguise them is difficult:  but the hopeless, cureless sadness of a heart which droops with regret, and throbs with resentment, is easily, very easily disguised, but not so easily banished.  I hear every body round me congratulating themselves, and me more particularly, that we have at last reached Florence, that we are so far advanced on our road homewards, that soon we shall be at Paris, and Paris is to do wonders—­Paris and Dr. R** are to set me up again, as the phrase is.  But I shall never be set up again, I shall never live to reach Paris; none can tell how I sicken at the very name of that detested place; none seem aware how fast, how very fast the principle of life is burning away within me:  but why should I speak? and what earthly help can now avail me?  I can suffer in silence, I can conceal the weakness which increases upon me, by retiring, as if from choice and not necessity, from all exertion not absolutely inevitable; and the change is so gradual, none will perceive it till the great change of all comes, and then I shall be at rest.