better; but there's _not_ an end
in most cases, by any manner of means, and against every sort
of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr. Lever, who lives
irreproachably with his wife and family, rides out with his children
in a troop of horses to the Cascine, and yet is as social a person
as his joyous temperament leads him to be. But we live in a cave, and
peradventure he is afraid of the damp of us--who knows? We know very
few residents in Florence, and these, with chance visitors, chiefly
Americans, are all that keep us from solitude; every now and then in
the evening somebody drops in to tea. Would, indeed, you were near!
but should I be satisfied with you 'once a week,' do you fancy. Ah,
you would soon love Robert. You couldn't help it, I am sure. I should
be soon turned down to an underplace, and, under the circumstances,
would not struggle. Do you remember once telling me that 'all men are
tyrants'?--as sweeping an opinion as the Apostle's, that 'all men
are liars.' Well, if you knew Robert you would make an exception
certainly. Talking of the artistical English here, somebody told me
the other day of a young Cambridge or Oxford man who deducted from
his researches in Rome and Florence that 'Michael Angelo was a wag.'
Another, after walking through the Florentine galleries, exclaimed to
a friend of mine, 'I have seen nothing here equal to those magnificent
pictures in Paris by Paul de Kock.' My friend humbly suggested that he
might mean Paul de la Roche. But see what English you send us for
the most part. We have had one very interesting visitor lately, the
grandson of Goethe. He did us the honour, he said, of spending two
days in Florence on our account, he especially wishing to see Robert
on account of some sympathy of view about 'Paracelsus.' There can
scarcely be a more interesting young man--quite young he seems, and
full of aspiration of the purest kind towards the good and true and
beautiful, and not towards the poor laurel crowns attainable from
any possible public. I don't know when I have been so charmed by a
visitor, and indeed Robert and I paid him the highest compliment we
could, by wishing, one to another, that our little Wiedeman might be
like him some day. I quite agree with you about the church of your
Henry. It surprises me that a child of seven years should find
pleasure even once a day in the long English service--too long,
according to my doxy, for matured years. As to fanaticism, it depen