... We shall leave Paris to-morrow or next day, stopping in Rheims to see the churches, at Louvain for the Town House, and so on to Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges.... If I don’t see you in Oxford, I shall stop long enough in London to get a glimpse of you. Our plan is to go to Switzerland and Germany, and so down to Italy for the winter. Then back to Paris, and so over to England on our way home next year. I hate travelling with my whole soul, though I like well enough to “be” in places.... _To Mrs. Lewis A. Stimson._ BRUGES, 25 June, 1873. ... I have been over to Oxford to be doctored, and had a very pleasant time of it. You would respect me if you could have seen me in my scarlet gown.... We go from here in a day or two to Holland--then up the Rhine to Switzerland, where we join the Stephens and Miss Thackeray. _To C. E. Norton._ VENICE, 30 October, 1873. ... Since we left Bruges, we have been up the Rhine, and then across to Nürnberg, where we spent a fortnight in great contentment. Before this, however, we had made a pretty good giro in the Low Countries, going wherever there was a good cathedral or Town Hall.... When we reached Geneva we found ourselves so comfortable that we stayed two months and did some reading. I liked the town, and especially the walks in its neighborhood, very much. Then we went to Chamonix, and then over the Simplon to the Italian lakes, whence we came hither. Venice charms me more than ever. We keep a gondola and go about leisurely seeing all the lovely things.... The weather has not been very good, but there has been only one day when we could not go out in the gondola without the _coperto_, either toward the Lido or over the lagunes to watch the sunset, or through the smaller canals to find that the very back lanes of Venice are finer than the highstreets anywhere else.... I am recovering a little facility in Italian--to be lost again when I get beyond the daily sound of it. I give Fanny a lesson every day in the Promessi Sposi, which has so often served as a go-cart to those who are learning to take their first steps in the language. She reads aloud to me, so that I save my eyes and practise my ears at the same time. She is a very good scholar for she puts zeal into whatever she does, and is making great progress. It is odd to me how the familiar phrases cling round my brain like bats to the roof of a cage, and are set flying all of a sudden by a chance footfall. I am very much struck, by the way, to find how much more vividly I remember the Venetian pictures than any others. I can’t help thinking it implies a peculiar merit in them. I recall them as I do natural objects--the Staubbach for example, or Hogarth.... _To Thomas Hughes._