so is the weather, which is
diviner. We sit with the windows wide open, and find it almost too warm,
and to-day Robert and I have been wandering under the trees of the
Pincio and looking to the Monte Marino pine. Let the best come, I don't
like Rome, I never shall; and as they have put into the English
newspapers that I don't, I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very
glad I shall be to see you and Paris, even though my beloved Florence
shall be left behind. Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we
go on to London for the printing of Robert's book (mine won't be ready
till later in the year), and for the sight of some dear English faces
while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in
France. Well, you will go with us to England, won't you? The dear
nonno[33] will spare you to go with us? It will do you good, and it will
do us good, certainly.

I quite agree with you that there's no situation like the Champs
Elysees--really, there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you
put away Venice--for a situation in a city.

The worst of the Champs Elysees is that it is out of the way, and
expensive on the point of carriages when you can't walk far. People tell
you, too, that the air is sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun
is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists.
Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And
what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the
desirableness of the pure air and free walking for Penini
counterbalances them.

The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, and have been
very desolate, I fear, without a female servant or friend near them.
They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (which
was slight, however; the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they
say), and by their father's more serious attack, for I have heard very
different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still, it has been an
abnormal winter everywhere, and there are cold winds on that coast on
certain months of the year always. Lockhart has gone away with the Duke
of Wellington, who was in deep consideration how he should manage his
funeral on the road. Robert was present when the question was mooted on
the Duke's last evening. _Should_ he send the body to England or bury
it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody
said: 'Suppose you were to ask what he wou