Do not fancy that I repine at being here because I turn with fond affection to the scene of my earliest days. I delight in Italy; I glory in its splendor of sky and land and water. I never weary of its beauteous vegetation, and my ear drinks in with equal pleasure the soft accents of its language; but I always feel that these things are to be treasured for memory to be enjoyed hereafter, just as the emigrant labors for the gold he is to spend in his own country. In this wise, it may be, when wandering along some mountain "boreen" at home, sauntering of a summer's eve through some waving meadow, that Italy in all its brightness will rise before me, and I will exalt in my heart to have seen the towers of the Eternal City, and watched the waves that sleep in "still Sorrento." We leave this to-morrow for Spezia, there to pass a few days; our object being to loiter slowly along till papa can finally decide whether to go back or forward: for so is it, my dearest friend, all our long-planned tour and its pleasures have resolved themselves into a hundred complications of finance and fashionable acquaintances. One might have supposed, from our failures in these attempts, that we should have learned at least our own unfitness for success. The very mortifications we have suffered might have taught us that all the enjoyment we could ever hope to reap could not repay the price of a single defeat. Yet here we are, just as eager, just as short-sighted, just as infatuated as ever, after a world that will have "none of us," and steadily bent on storming a position in society that, if won to-morrow, we could not retain. I suppose that our reverses in this wise must have attained some notoriety, and I am even prepared to hear that the Dodd family have made themselves unhappily conspicuous by their unfortunate attempt at greatness; but I own, dearest friend, that I am not able to contemplate with the same philosophical submission the loss of good men's esteem and respect, to which these failures must expose US--an instance of which, I tremble to think, has already occurred to us.