to be—seven years ago) of those places; so utterly the prey of the Barbarian now that if you still ever yearn for them take an easy comfort and thank your stars that you knew them in the less blighted and dishonoured time. It is very singular to me, living here (in this comparatively old-world corner which has nothing else but its own little immemorial blots and vulgarisms—besides all its great merits) to find myself plunged into the strain of the rankest and most promiscuous actuality as soon as, crossing to the Continent, I direct myself to the shrines of a superior antiquity. One is so out of the stream here that one almost wholly forgets it—and then it is incongruously the most sacred pilgrimages that most vociferously remind one—because (to put it as gracefully as possible) most cosmopolitanly. "Left to myself" I really think I should scarce ever budge from here again—unless to go back to the U.S., which, honestly, I should like almost as much as I should (in some connections—the "travelling" above all) dread it. But the dread wouldn't be the same dread of the American-Anglican and German Italy. These will strike you as cheerful sentiments for the eve of a pleasure-trip abroad, and I shall feel better when I've started; but even so the travel-impulse (which I've had almost no opportunity in my life really to gratify) is extinct as from inanition (and personal antiquity!) and above all, more and more, the only way I care to travel is by reading. To stay at home and read is more and more my ideal—and it's one that you have beautifully realized. I think it was the sense of all that it has so admirably done for you that confirmed me while I was with you in my high estimation of it. Great, every way, dear Grace, and all-exemplary, I thought the dignity and coherency and benignity of your life—long after beholding it as it has taken me (by th