were created to revel in boiling oil. The wine sold here was the produce of the vineyard which you could see behind and on each side of the little _trattoria_. We had a large loaf of bread, and something like a quart and a half of pure cool wine for nine of our cents. During the whole time I was in Florence, though I never saw any one drink water, I also never saw a single drunken man, except some Austrian soldiers, and only four of these--two of them officers. In Rome, also, drunkenness is exceedingly rare, but less so, I think, than in Florence. Here you see everywhere the sign, _Spaccio d’ Acqua Vitæ_. In Florence I never remember to have seen spirits advertised for sale, except by those who dealt in the wants of the _Forestieri_.” Just before leaving the city for Rome, Lowell was filled with consternation at a letter received from home, telling him that his father had been stricken with paralysis. His first impulse was to take his family to Rome and then return at once to America, but a little reflection showed him how useless this would be. “I should never have left home,” he wrote his father from Pisa, where they had halted on their way to Leghorn, “if I had not thought that you wished it, or rather wished that we should have been abroad and got back. I hope to find a letter awaiting us at Rome. But at any rate we shall come home as soon as we can. I hardly know what I am writing, for I have just got word from Mr. Black at Leghorn, saying that our places are engaged on board the steamer for Civita Vecchia, and that we must be there as soon as possible in the morning. I am going on in the early train, leaving Maria to come at one o’clock with a servant from the hotel. It is now between nine and ten, and the rain still falls heavily. I fear a bad day to-morrow, and what with that and thinking about you and home, my mind is confused. I find nothing abroad which, after being seen, would tempt me away from Elmwood again. I enjoy the Art here, but I shall equally enjoy it there in the retrospect. I wish some of the buildings were on the other side of the water, but I suppose we should be more contented not to see them if they were.”