complacency insupportable to behold.

"We are going to have a bad winter in England too probably. What with
Ireland, and what with the last new Government device of getting in
the taxes before they are due, and what with vagrants, and what with
fever, the prospect is gloomy."

The last letter I ever received from him is dated the 10th of
November, 1869. It is a long letter, but I will give only one passage
from it, which has, alas! a peculiarly sad and touching significance
when read with the remembrance of the catastrophe then hurrying on,
which was to put an end to all projects and purposes. I had been
suggesting a walking excursion across the Alps. He writes:--

"Walk across the Alps? Lord bless you, I am 'going' to take up my
alpenstock and cross all the passes. And, I am 'going' to Italy. I am
also 'going' up the Nile to the second cataract; and I am 'going' to
Jerusalem, and to India, and likewise to Australia. My only dimness
of perception in this wise is, that I don't know _when_. If I did but
know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present
I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain
farewell readings and a certain new book (just begun) interposing
their dwarfish shadow. But whenever (if ever) I change 'going' into
'coming,' I shall come to see you.

"With kind regards, ever, my dear Trollope,

"Your affectionate friend,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

* * * * *

And those were the last words I ever had from him!

CHAPTER VIII.

In those days--_temporibus illis_, as the historians of long-forgotten
centuries say--there used to be a very general exodus of the English
colony at Florence to the baths of Lucca during the summer months.
Almost all Italians, who can in anywise afford to do so, leave the
great cities nowadays for the seaside, even as those do who have
preceded them in the path of modern luxurious living. But at the time
of which I am writing the Florentines who did so were few, and almost
confined to that inner circle of the fashionable world which partly
lived with foreigners, and had adopted in many respects their modes
and habits. Those Italians, however, who did leave their Florence
homes in the summer, went almost all of them to Leghorn. The baths of
Lucca were an especially and almost exclusively English resort.

It was possible to induce the _vetturini_ who supplied carriages and
horses for the purpose, to do t