I LEFT Paris four weeks ago this morning. I cannot for the life of me remember if I have written to you in that time. Seems to me, though, I wrote from Siena. Anyhow, I will make that my starting point. From there we—the lady who is traveling with me is an Ohioan from G—— originally, and the sister of H. H. B——, the historian of the tribes of the Pacific coast—went to Naples via here. We spent a night and a day driving about in the brilliant sunshine, seeing many points of interest by way of preparation for my return. Then on to Naples. It was raining hard and 11 o’clock at night when we reached it. Several days of promiscuous rain and shine, the former out of all proportion to the latter, rather disgusted me. I could not get to Capri, to Baja, to the top of Vesuvius. I had the views between showers of that world-renowned bay, and went in them to the churches, museums, and the lovely palace, Capodimonte. It both rained and snowed a little while I was inside the last. Of course you know it is atop of one of the loftiest points about N——, and that it is full of pictures and all kinds of lovely things. But there is one painting there I think you may not have heard of—Michael Angelo kissing the hand of his dead friend, Vittoria Colonna. You remember he once afterwards regretted he had not kissed her brow or lips. This is a grand picture, the figures life-size. Vittoria lies shrouded in a rich white satin robe, confined about her feet with laurel branches. The face has a worn look—that of

Angelo is bending down, with his lips touching her folded hands and his countenance knotted with grief and the heavy sense of loss. Ah! no future would ever be to him like the past! I felt his loss like my own; and the tears sprang quick and blinding. This was the only picture of them all I brought away with me. At the Museum, the Pompeian frescoes, the Farnese Hercules Bull, made the deepest impression. One of the frescoes, a Nereid on the back of a sea panther, I tried to get a photograph of, but failed. You know Donneker’s Ariadne? I think he must have got the idea from this, and as I have it in ivory—the most perfect little gem—I wanted this too. I saw a very curious and interesting spectacle in one of the churches, St. Dominico, in the sacristy: the coffin of the Marchese di Pescara, Vittoria Colonna’s husband. It was one of a number, ten of which contained the remains of kings and queens, placed around the walls just below the ceiling. They had faded scarlet covers. On his was an inscription by Aristo; above it, his portrait; at one end, his banner; and attached to the side, his sword. Everything concerning that noble woman is of the deepest interest to me; so I made a pilgrimage to see the portrait and coffin of the lover-husband she has embalmed in her verses.

The rain continuing, we “broke up camp,” and went to Pompeii. It poured for a day and a half there; and then the sun burst forth and I spent all Sunday in that exhumed city. Impossible to convey the slightest idea of the fascination of it. Come and try it for yourself. At night Vesuvius added the strange and rather terror-inspiring charm of its glowing crater, slow-flowing lava and brilliant column of smoke rising far aloft. It kept me going to my window all night. I’ll tell you about it some day. Next to La Cava, a beautiful town in a vale surrounded by chains of the most picturesque mountain peaks. There it rained and snowed again—snowed heavily on the mountain tops. All the vale was dressed in the “living green” of mid-spring. The snow in it was a March flurry. From there we had a lovely drive—a Cornichean drive—around the headlands of the sea to Amalfi. Read Longfellow’s poem “Amalfi.” I clambered to the Convent (now a hotel) for the view and lunch. Both were incomparable. Read the poem copied in the Guest-book and shown with great pride, and left as Eve left Paradise, “with reluctant steps and slow.” Next day, Paestum! Oh! those inexpressible ruins! What an element worship has been in the life of our race. I never realized this more deeply than in those majestic old temples. I gathered acanthus from crevices in the crumbling columns and stones of the floors. Next day Castellamare and Sorrento, with another ideal drive between them. At the latter, I went to the finest orange grove in that district, and gathered oranges from the trees for myself. Ah! that was fruit fit for the gods. Naples again and rain. I waited two more days for Capri in vain. Spent them at the Museum, where I fell in love again—and this time with youth and beauty, a bronze statuette of Narcissus listening to Echo. If I gave myself leave how I could rave about it. I got every photograph I could find and mean to have a copy if I can find one. It was found in Pompeii. What lovers of beauty peopled that ill-fated city.

I have been here since Saturday. Sunday was Palm Sunday at St. Peter’s. I went. The grand edifice did not disappoint. The ceremonies and music did. Shall I send you a leaf of the consecrated palm? Monday was spent in getting settled. Tuesday, the Albani Villa. To-day, the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Transfiguration at the Vatican; and Guido’s Aurora at the Rospigliosi Palace.

Have I ever told you how I wished with a passionate intensity to spend a full winter in Rome? and now I am having the fulfillment. Almost I can believe Goethe, “Time brings the fulfillment of what is passionately longed for when we are young.” Those are not his words perhaps, but they convey his idea. When I first read them twenty or twenty-five years ago, I did not agree with him. Curious that the flight of time which has made me reject faith in the principle of compensation, should make me a believer in that.

“Whoever,” says Chateaubriand, “has nothing else left in life should come to Rome to live; there he will find for society a land which will nourish his reflections, walks which will always tell him something new.” Read again what Hawthorne says in “The Marble Faun,” that after one has lived in Rome and talked it and left it, he is astonished to find his “heartstrings have mysteriously attached themselves to” it “and are drawing him thitherward again, as if it were more familiar—more intimately his home than even the spot where he was born.” Do you know I feel every word of this! If you want to have a touch of this Roman fever read, stopping to make pictures to your mind’s eye as you read “The Marble Faun,” Hans Andersen’s “Improvisatore,” Storey’s “Robe di Roma,” and Ouida’s “Ariadne.” This last you must give me your opinion of. I have been to all the places she names; almost to all each names. The weather is mild, generally sunshine to make one think the worship of that luminary not the worst the world has ever known.

Spring flowers are thick everywhere. Yesterday brought such a clever letter from Miss D——. I think I must quote a bit or two to give you “a taste of her quality.”

I had sent some Xmas souvenirs to her and her sisters. Of the younger two—very young—she said: “You should have seen D—— and M—— when they told their friends, ‘My cousin in Paris sent me this,’ with the air of being thankful that they were not as other little girls that had no cousin in Paris.”

L. G. C.

Rome, March 19, 1883.