Dearest Kitty,--This must be the very shortest of letters, for we are on the wing, and shall be for some days to come. Very few words, however, will suffice to tell you that we have at length persuaded papa to come on to Florence,--for the winter, of course. Rome will follow,--then Naples,--_e poi?_--who knows! I think he must have received some very agreeable tidings from your uncle Purcell, for he has been in better spirits than I have seen him latterly, and shows something like a return to his old vein of pleasantry. Not but I must own that it is what the French would call, very often, a _mauvaise plaisanterie_ in its exercise, his great amusement being to decry and disparage the people of the Continent. He seems quite to forget that in every country the traveller is, and must be, a mark for knavery and cheating. His newness to the land, his ignorance, in almost all cases, of the language, his occasional mistakes, all point him out as a proper subject for imposition; and if the English come to compare notes with any Continental country, I'm not so sure we should have much to plume ourselves upon, as regards our treatment of strangers. For our social misadventures abroad, it must be confessed that we are mainly most to blame ourselves. All the counterfeits of rank, station, and position are so much better done by foreigners than by our people, that we naturally are more easily imposed on. Now in England, for instance, it would be easier to be a duchess than to imitate one successfully. All the attributes that go to make up such a station abroad, might be assumed by any adventurer of little means and less capacity. We forget--or, more properly speaking, we do not know--this, when we come first on the Continent; hence the mistakes we fall into, and the disasters that assail us. It would be very disagreeable for me to explain at length how what I mentioned to you about James's marriage has come to an untimely conclusion. Enough when I say that the lady was not, in any respect, what she had represented herself, and my dear brother may be said to have had a most fortunate escape. Of course the poor fellow has suffered considerably from the disappointment, nor are his better feelings alleviated by the--I will say--very indelicate raillery papa is pleased to indulge in on the subject. It is, however, a theme I do not care to linger on, and I only thus passively allude to it that it may be buried in oblivion between us. We came along here from Genoa by the seaboard, a very beautiful and picturesque road, traversing a wild range of the Apennines, and almost always within view of the blue Mediterranean. At Spezia we loitered for a day or two, to bathe, and I must say nothing can be more innocently primitive than the practice as followed there.