“I thank you heartily, my dear Charles, for all your criticisms. I like to hear them, and when I don’t agree it is not from self-love, of which (in such matters) I have as little as most men. But I have a respect for things that are _given me_, as the greater part of this was, and my poetry ought to show marks of design if it doesn’t. If I have done anything good, I owe it more largely to your sympathy, which spurred me out of my constitutional indolence and indifference, than to anything else. I like to tell you so, for it is true. I value my own natural gifts (as I think I have a right) but set no great store by my performance. I came into the world with a strong dose of poppy in my veins, and love dreaming better than doing. This has been a great hindrance to me, and I have struggled hard against it, but never against my consciousness of it.” ... * * * * * From Florence the Lowells went, 23 February, 1874, to Rome, and were with the Storys at the Palazzo Barberini. _To C. E. Norton._ ROME, 26 February, 1874. ... The journey from Florence was one long surprise in the snowy mountains. There is much more than common, and I had never seen them so before. But the almond-trees are in blossom. Rome saddens me, I can’t quite say how. My associations with it are of so peculiar and deep a kind, and so astonishingly undeadened by time. Generally I find I have forgotten much, but here all my memories seem of yesterday.... I have not much time to myself here in the Palazzo Barberini, as you will easily fancy. I am thoroughly glad to find my old friend’s statues so much to my liking. The Libyan Sybil, the Salome and the Electra I especially like. But he is now at work on an Alcestis which will be a long way ahead of anything he has done. It is beautifully simple, graceful, and dignified. _To the Same._ ROME, 2 March, 1874. ... The sun is just about to set, and I see the moon rising white over the stone pines that sentinel the gate of the Barberini Gardens. We have been at Sant’ Onofrio and seen the incomparable view thence. We started for the Vatican, but were too late, and so walked on to Sant’ Onofrio. The mountains are white as Switzerland--the farther ones I mean. I hardly knew the road from Florence hither for this strangeness of snow. But the almond-trees are in blossom, and the daisies and violets and other little field flowers unknown to me. _To Miss Norton._ ALBERGO CROCOLLE, NAPOLI, Marzo 12, 1874.