The old town itself is a marvel of picturesque crookedness, and the cathedral a marvel.  M. and I have been devoting ourselves this morning to St. Catarina and Sodoma’s pictures.

I am reading a very interesting life of her by Capecelatro, and if my liver continues out of order, may yet turn Dominican.

However, the place seems to be doing me good, and I may yet, like another person, decline to be a monk.

[To his daughter, Mrs. Roller.]

March 8.

The great merit of Rome is that you have never seen the end of it.  M. and I have not worked very hard at our galleries and churches, but I have got so far as a commencing dislike for the fine arts generally.  Perhaps after a week or two I shall take to science out of sheer weariness.

Hotel de Milano, Florence, March 12, 1885.

My dear Foster,

My wife and I send you our hearty good wishes (antedated by four days).  I am not sure we ought not to offer our best thanks to your mother for providing us with as staunch a friend as people ever were blessed with.  It is possible that she did not consider that point nine and forty years ago; but we are just as grateful as if she had gone through it all on our own account.

We start on our way homeward to-morrow or next day, by Bologna to Venice, and then to England by the way we came—­taking it easy.  The Brenner is a long way round and I hear very cold.  I think we may stay a few days at Lugano, which I liked very much when there before.  Florence is very charming, but there is not much to be said for the climate.  My wife has been bothered with sore throat, to which she is especially liable, ever since we have been here.  Old residents console her with the remark that Florentine sore throat is a regular thing in the spring.  The alternations of heat and cold are detestable.  So we stand thus—­Naples, bad for both—­Rome, good for her, bad for me—­Florence, bad for her, baddish for me.  Venice has to be tried, but stinks and mosquitoes are sure to render it impossible as soon as the weather is warm.  Siena is the only place that suited both of us, and I don’t think that would exactly answer to live in.  Nothing like foreign travel for making one content with home.

I shall have to find a country lot suited to my fortunes when I am paid off.  Couldn’t you let us have your gardener’s cottage? my wife understands poultry and I shall probably have sufficient strength to open the gate and touch my hat to the Dons as they drive up.  I am afraid E. is not steady enough for waiting-maid or I would offer her services.

...I am rejoiced to hear that the lessons and the questions are launched. [The new edition of the “Elementary Physiology.”] They loom large to me as gigantic undertakings, in which a dim and speculative memory suggests I once took part, but probably it is a solar myth, and I am too sluggish to feel much compunction for the extra trouble you have had.