“Then I was a month in a palatial hotel at S. Remo, and greatly enjoyed bright winter days of quiet drawing in its ravines with their high-striding bridges, by its torrents full of Titanic boulders, or on its pathlets winding through vine and fig gardens or along precipitous crags; most of all in a delicious palm-shaded cove by the sea, where I spent whole days alone with the great chrysoprase waves breaking over the rocks in showers of crystal spray. With a charming Mrs. Rycroft and her pleasant Eton boys, I made longer excursions to Ceriano and Badalucco, very curious places surrounded by high mountains, with deep gorges, old bridges, and waterfalls.
“But it is in changed, spoilt Rome that I have spent the last two months. All picturesqueness is now washed out of the place, so that people who have any interest about them now usually give it only a glance and pass on. It has been delightful for me, however, that Miss Hosmer is settled in this hotel, and that we dine together daily at a little round table, where she is a constant coruscation of wit and wisdom. All day she is shut up in her studio, which is closed to all the world, but she cannot have a dull time, by the stories she has to tell of the workmen and models who are her only companions. Here are a few of them, only they sound nothing without her twinkling eyes and capital manner of telling:—