ice to bid it farewell
forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has
happened to it, from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish
the very site had been obliterated before I ever saw it."

He found solace, however, during the series of domestic troubles
(continued illness in his family) that befell, in writing memoranda for
"The Marble Faun." He thus announces to me the beginning of the new
romance:--

"I take some credit to myself for having sternly shut myself up for
an hour or two almost every day, and come to close grips with a
romance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind. As for my
success, I can't say much; indeed, I don't know what to say at all.
I only know that I have produced what seems to be a larger amount of
scribble than either of my former romances, and that portions of it
interested me a good deal while I was writing them; but I have had
so many interruptions, from things to see and things to suffer, that
the story has developed itself in a very imperfect way, and will
have to be revised hereafter. I could finish it for the press in the
time that I am to remain here (till the 15th of April), but my brain
is tired of it just now; and, besides, there are many objects that I
shall regret not seeing hereafter, though I care very little about
seeing them now; so I shall throw aside the romance, and take it up
again next August at The Wayside."

He decided to be back in England early in the summer, and to sail for
home in July. He writes to me from Rome:--

"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be
very well contented there.... If I were but a hundred times richer
than I am, how very comfortable I could be! I consider it a great
piece of good fortune that I have had experience of the discomforts
and miseries of Italy, and did not go directly home from England.
Anything will seem like Paradise after a Roman winter.

"If I had but a house fit to live in, I should be greatly more
reconciled to coming home; but I am really at a loss to imagine how
we are to squeeze ourselves into that little old cottage of mine. We
had outgrown it before we came away, and most of us are twice as big
now as we were then.

"I have an attachment to the place, and should be sorry to give it
up; but I shall half ruin myself if I try to enlarge