"London, Dec. 10, 1888,
"2 Holland Park Road.
"Dearest Tonina,—A thousand thanks for the twelve letters which I have found awaiting me here.
"I have just arrived from the station, where I found the President, who was shedding light all round him, all radiant with his white beard. Note that the train arrived at a quarter past five, and there was an hour's drive from the station to his house, and then he had to dine, and at half-past seven he was due at the Academy for a distribution of prizes to the students, where I, too, was to have accompanied him. However, in London there was one of those fogs which put a stop to all traffic, and it took us an hour and three-quarters to reach home.
"The cabman had to get down and lead the horse; with one hand he guided the animal, which was slipping on the ice, and with the other he held a lantern. What darkness,—the gloom of hell itself! Boys holding torches and shouting, showed us the way; foot passengers called out, 'Hi there! look where you're going to!' but, in spite of everything, the cabman with his lantern banged into a railing.
"At last we arrived at our destination, having discussed all the way along the speech which Leighton made at Liverpool. The dinner was ready, and eaten hurriedly, with the obligatory champagne. I had eaten nothing since the morning. Whilst dining, I got off accompanying him to the Academy, pleading my rheumatic pains, and I ate like a famished and attentive dog. But the President, spite of the hurry he was in, never once ceased from tracing the iron line along which I am to run as long as I am with him, and so he has set me down for a trip on Saturday.
"Good-night; I am going to bed, as I am deadly sleepy. Did you receive a letter of mine from Castle Howard?
"Thank for me the kind writers of the twelve little letters; in the midst of these fogs they have been twelve stars to me. A kiss to dear Tonachino. Frederic was much amused by Georgia's letter, and embraces you all.
"Love to all, from Ninaccio, who has the greatest possible desire to repass the Channel."—(See "Giovanni Costa: His Life, Work, and Times," by Olivia Rossetti Agresti.)
[79] It may interest his friends to know that the valuable collection of casts which Mr. Copland Perry spent four years in forming, after visits to all the collections of ancient sculptures in Europe, has been ceded to the British Museum, and will be transferred from the South Kensington Museum, where it has long been hidden away in a dark corridor, to suitable courts in the new buildings of the British Museum.
[80] Professor Church's Lectures were given to the outer world beyond the Academy in the form of a book, published in 1891, and dedicated by permission to Leighton.