important chapter in his "Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages": "I am writing under great difficulties, and had better betake myself to some subject on which preciseness of expression is less desirable. Grace is reading aloud in the next room a number of 'Edwin Drood,' and, though the door is shut, every word comes plainly to my ear, and I weakly cannot help being distracted by Dickens' unparalleled vivacity and picturesqueness. We have been here now for almost a fortnight and are most pleasantly settled for the summer in a great old-fashioned Villa, -about as big as the Tremont House, -clean and cheerful and comfortable within, with an air of oldfashioned elegance about arrangement and furniture,

and situated in the midst of a country of delightful beauty. All is thoroughly Italian,- from the little family Chapel with its memorial tablets on the walls, and silver crucifix and candlesticks on the altar, to the spacious hall hung with Venetian mirrors, and the little terraced garden, and the little plot of ornamental wood beyond in which is a rural Robinson Crusoe hut, and a monument of white marble to a faithful dog.

The villa lies surrounded by a great podere or farm, and beyond the cypress-bordered avenues lie olive orchards and fields of grain, and all the pretty varieties of the scenery of a hill and valley farm. Little grass paths lead through the cultivated fields, between rows of vines, down into the valley through which runs a little brook, and up the opposite bank, till half a mile off they reach on either side, one of the roads toward

Siena. The city gate is a mile and a half from us, and we see from our windows the picturesque old wall overtopped by the tall tower of the Palace of the Republic, by the campanile, and by the great front and roof of the beautiful Cathedral. But the view is too various and too beautiful to be described."

How "thoroughly Italian" life in the Villa Spannocchi was, the following entry from Norton's notebook under date of October 12, 1870, gives a further suggestion:

Last evening, just before sunset, as Sue and I returned from our drive, there was a young fellow from Siena playing the organino (accordeon) by our door, to the delight of the children of the contadini. He was, they said, a member of the band, a friend of one of the young contadini. He played very nicely, — and Sue asked him to come into the cortile, where it was more sheltered, and the music would sound clearer. He came in, the contadini following; a light was brought, the twilight came in through the wide door, and there, ranged round the wall, some on seats, some on the floor, assembled the whole household of contadini, from the grey old capoccio to little black-haired Antonio, and all our little children, and Jane and Sue, and our servants — a picturesque group listening to the good-natured musician as he played and sang. Sally was greatly pleased to hear the pretty air of "Napoleone vatene da Roma" played with its precise

notes.

To John Ruskin

VILLA SPANNOCCHI, SIENA, June 15, 1870.

It was a great comfort to me to get your letter last night, with its fairly good news of you. It came to me at the end of the day that had been saddened by the news of Dickens's death. What a loss to mankind, the man who has done most in his time to make the hearts of men cheerful and kindly, and to draw them together in sympathy and good-will. . . .

Just at this time England can ill spare such a leader in the uncertain battle in which you and all other humane and thoughtful and patriotic men are engaged. The prospect of the field, dark enough before, grows visibly darker, with the loss of one who so long had been among the foremost in the struggle. Dickens took the most serious view of the conditions of society in England. The last long talk I had with him was very striking from the display of his clear, strong, masculine sense as to the nature of the evils that are imperilling the foundations of the state, and as to the remedies for them, combined with an almost tragic intensity of feeling, and prophetic vigour of expression. We were waiting for a train, and as we walked up and down the platform, he seemed so strong and likely to live long, that I thought of him as almost certain to come to the fore in case of any sudden terrible overflow of the ignorance, misery and recklessness which the selfishness of the upper classes has fostered, and which now, as Dickens believed, are far more threatening to those classes than they seem to have the power of conceiving.