He paid a visit to Goethe’s house and the next day went on to Dresden, where he reflected that it was just twenty-five years since he was living there, a young man then, an old man now, but that he should find the Sistine Madonna and a few other old friends as young as ever. From Dresden he went to Venice, and there he found his friend Mr. Field. “He is as young and social as ever,” he wrote to Mr. Norton, 31 October; “has made the acquaintance here of everybody he didn’t know before, and goes with me to Florence on Thursday. The Brownings have also been here, but go to-morrow morning. The weather has been _brutto assai_, only two partly fine days during the time I have been here, and to-day it rains. We hear of three inches of snow at Vicenza, and I can well believe it, so cold has it been. _Che tempo straongante!_ Still, Venice has been beautiful and dear for all that. Browning begins to show his seventy years (he will be seventy next February) a little, though his natural [force] be not abated. I hear that I am to stay in England, all rumors to the contrary notwithstanding.[77] Fanny continues better. She did not venture to come with me. I shall probably go on as far as Rome, and get back to London in time for the best fogs.” To Mrs. Lowell be wrote from Venice, 1 November: “To-day the sky is bright for the third time since my arrival. All the other days have been cloudy or rainy, with a cold _tramontana_ blowing steadily and strongly.... You remember that Lady Gordon told me I should find a _bateau mouche_ plying on the Grand Canal. I did not expect to be personally inconvenienced by it; but as it lessened the custom of the gondoliers they have all struck work this morning, and one can’t get a _barca_ for love or money. Poor fellows, they will find, as others have done, that steam is stronger than they.... I have given up Rimini owing to the cold, and shall start for Florence day after to-morrow with Field, who is younger and livelier than ever,--and makes more acquaintances every day than I should in a year.”