“I am, thank God, better, but still very weak, and wholly unfit for any kind of business and study. I have, however, considerably recovered the use of all the limbs that were affected; and as my amendment has been slow and gradual, I hope in time it may be complete. But I am leading the life of an anchorite, obliged to abstain from flesh, wine, business, study, experiments, and all things that I love; but this discipline is salutary, and for the sake of being able to do something more for science, and I hope for humanity, I submit to it, believing that the Great Source of intellectual being so wills it for good.” He tells Poole that he had chosen Ravenna--this spot of the declining Empire of Rome--as one of solitude and repose, and as out of the way of travellers and in a good climate. He was interested, too, in its many associations with his friend Byron, with Dante, and in its old-world memories of Theodoric and his lost legions. How the place affected him in his state of physical enfeeblement, but with his mind chastened and purified, may be seen in the character of much that he wrote there, and particularly in his poems, with their many notes of sadness and hope, trust and resignation. He was lodged in the Apostolical Palace by the kindness of the Vice-Legate--a graceful, learned, and accomplished man, with whom he contracted a warm friendship. He says he could not speak of his goodness without tears of gratitude in his eyes, and with this exception and an occasional visit from the Countess Guiccioli he had no society. Most of his time was spent in riding amidst the pines and junipers, or following the petzardone among the marshes of La Classe; or in reading and in the study of natural history. “The natural strength of his mind,” says his brother, “was very clearly manifested under these circumstances. Dependent entirely on his own resources; no friend to converse with; no one with him to rely on for aid, and in a foreign country, without even a medical adviser; destitute of all the amusements of society; without any of the comforts of home--month after month, he kept on his course, wandering from river to river, from one mountain lake and valley to another, in search of favourable climate; amusing himself with his gun and rod, when sufficiently strong to use them, with ‘_speranza_’ for his rallying word.” With the approach of spring he passed by way of Gorizia into Illyria, and, as the heat increased, into Upper Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland, and back, in the late summer, to Illyria. His journals give a fairly full account of his movements and of the manner in which he spent his time; they also indicate his state of mind, the alternations of hope and despondency, and his constant struggles with the insidious disease which was gradually exhausting his physical powers. He wrote to his wife from Laybach:--