So, as Shakespeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk, who died at Venice (see Richard II.), that he, after fighting
"Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens,
And toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy, and there, at Venice, gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth.
And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long!"
Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr. Hobhouse's sheets of Juan. Don't wait for further answers from me, but address yours to Venice as usual. I know nothing of my own movements; I may return there in a few days, or not for some time. All this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well, as well as his son and Mrs. Hoppner. My daughter Allegra was well too, and is growing pretty; her hair is growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mrs. H. says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady.
I have never heard anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae. But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. What a long letter I have scribbled.
Yours &c.
P.S. Here, as in Greece, they strew flowers on the tombs. I saw a quantity of rose-leaves, and entire roses, scattered over the graves at Ferrara. It has the most pleasing effect you can imagine.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] No one who has seen the Roman girl's hair at York, nearer two thousand than two hundred years old, will doubt this, though her tresses are not "yellow."