I see I shall always write at night. After coffee and half an hour in the reading-room (I always go and have a look at the papers while W. smokes) we come upstairs. W. plunges at once into his notes, and I read and write. It has been lovely to-day and we have had a nice afternoon. W. came home to breakfast at 1, as he wanted to see the Brera and "Cenacolo" once again; and it is of course too late when we start for our afternoon drive at 4.30. We walked to the Brera--it isn't far--and were there a long time. We made a long stop in the vestibule looking at the Luini frescoes--all scenes in the Virgin's life--Madonnas, angels, saints--quantities of figures, and colours and accessories of all kinds--wonderful trees and buildings and clouds with angels and seraphim rising out of them. They must have had marvellous imaginations, those early Italian painters. They never saw anything to suggest such pictures to them, and of course never read anything--there were no books to read--merely written manuscripts difficult enough for scholars to decipher. All the wonderful scenes--Nativity, Coronation, etc.--evoked out of their own brains. I think I like the Annunciation the best of all the scenes of the Virgin's life. There is a beautiful one in the Pitti--I forget now by whom--the Virgin just risen from her chair with a half-dazed, half-triumphant look, and the angel kneeling before her with his lily. I like some of the German ones, too, but they are much more elaborate--the Virgin often standing in a wide arch--a portico--more figures in the background--and the Virgin herself quite a German girl--not at all the lovely, spiritual head of the Italian masters. We walked through all the rooms. The Venetian pictures (Paul Veronese school) looked beautiful. W., too, was struck with the splendid colouring. Some of the names quite unknown, and if one looked too closely there were perhaps faults of drawing and exaggeration of colour, but the effect was extraordinary. He admired the men's portraits excessively, by Titian, Tintoretto, Moroni, etc. They are very fine--sometimes a soldier with keen, hard eyes, clad in complete armour--often a noble, some grand seigneur of his time, in black velvet and fur with jewelled cap and chain, a fine patrician head and thoughtful face. We didn't see the young guide who went about with me--I was rather sorry--I wanted W. to hear his beautiful Italian. We stayed so long looking at everything (Luini's pictures are most interesting, too--he must have had an extraordinary capacity for work) that we had just time to get a cab and drive over to Santa Maria delle Grazie to see the "Cenacolo" as it shuts at 4. The Saviour's head, St. John, and some of the other faces are beautiful--but it is so faded (and on the other hand has been touched up a little) that I was disappointed.