also condemned to dress and undress each time; otherwise I think many of them must be tempted to follow the example of that poor gentleman who cut his throat, leaving a paper on the table in which he stated that it was the constant buttoning and unbuttoning which had been too much for him. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view as the plain of Tuscany opens before you. We had seen it two‐and‐twenty years ago, before any railroads were there to cut short the delights of travelling. We had gazed long and lingeringly from out the windows of our travelling‐carriage, while the setting sun left his last kiss on the mountain heights, and the evening mists gathered below. I, for one, had never seen it since. But sometimes in my dreams that view had come back to me, and, when I awoke, it Was still there. Sometimes the phantasmagoria of the mind had suddenly unfolded it before my memory without my being able to say when and where I had painted that picture on my brain. And now I saw it again; and suddenly all those broken recollections seemed to gather themselves together, and unroll before me, while my soul whispered, “Here is the reality of what for so many years has haunted you, and which you have so often been tempted to believe was a trick of your imagination. It is a fact; and you can recall it and put it together, piece by piece; as you will do, far more perfectly, the broken and half‐forgotten fragments of your life when the barrier of death is passed.” The only other wide expanse which has left the same impression on my imagination, waking and sleeping, is the view from the beautiful viaduct at Aricia, as it first burst upon me—the vast campagna and the crimson lights of the setting sun.