I got your delightful note yesterday at Turin, and it made me wish to run back through the tunnel directly instead of coming on here. But I had a wonderful day, the Alps clear all the morning all round Italy—two hundred miles of them; and then in the afternoon blue waves [Pg 53] of the Gulf of Genoa breaking like blue clouds, thunderclouds, under groves of olive and palm. But I wished they were my sparkling waves of Coniston instead, when I read your letter again.

What a gay Susie, receiving all the world, like a Queen Susan (how odd one has never heard of a Queen Susan!), only you are so naughty, and you never do tell me of any of those nice girls when they're coming, but only when they're gone, and I never shall get glimpse of them as long as I live.

But you know you really represent the entire Ruskin school of the Lake Country, and I think these levées of yours must be very amusing and enchanting; but it's very dear and good of you to let the people come and enjoy themselves, and how really well and strong you must be to be able for it.

I am very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things. [36] I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study Emerson and aspire to Buddhism.

I'm trying to put my own poor little fragmentary Ism into a rather more connected form of imagery. I've never quite set myself up enough to impress some people; and I've written so much that I can't quite make out what I am myself, nor what it all comes to.

TO MISS BEEVER.

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10th January, 1883.

I cannot tell you how grateful and glad I am, to have your lovely note and to know that the Bewick gave you pleasure, and that you are so [Pg 54] entirely well now, as to enjoy anything requiring so much energy and attention to this degree. For indeed I can scarcely now take pleasure myself in things that give me the least trouble to look at, but I know that the pretty book and its chosen wood-cuts ought to be sent to you, first of all my friends (I have not yet thought of sending it to any one else), and I am quite put in heart after a very despondent yesterday, passed inanely, in thinking of what I couldn't do, by feeling what you can, and hoping to share the happy Christmas time with you and Susie in future years. Will you please tell my dear Susie I'm going to bring over a drawing to show! (so thankful that I am still able to draw after these strange and terrible illnesses) this afternoon. I am in hopes it may clear, but dark or bright I'm coming, about half past three, and am ever your and her most affectionate and faithful servant.