Here we are still in this blessed place, this being now our seventh day in a hole you would n't condemn a dog to live in. How long we might have continued our sojourn it is hard to say, when a mere accident has afforded us the prospect of liberation. It turns out that two families arrived and went forward last night, having only halted to sup and change horses. On inquiry why we could n't be supposed capable of the same exertion, you 'll not believe me when I tell you the answer we got. No, Tom! The enormous power of lying abroad is clear and clean beyond your conception. It was this, then. We could go when we pleased,--it was entirely a caprice of our own that we had not gone before. "How so, may I ask?" said I, in the meekest of inquiring voices. "You would n't go like others," was the answer. "In what respect,--how?" asked I again. "Oh, your English notions rejected the idea of a sledge. You insisted upon going on wheels, and as no wheeled carriage could run--" Grant me patience, or I'll explode like a shell. My hand shakes, and my temples are throbbing so that I can scarcely write the lines. I made a great effort at a calm and discretionary tone, but it would n't do; a certain fulness about the throat, a general dizziness, and a noise like the sea in my ears, told me that I'd have been behaving basely to the "Guardian" and the "Equitable Fire and Life" were I to continue the debate. I sat down, and with a sponge and water and loose cravat, I got better. There was considerable confusion in my faculties on my coming to myself; I had a vague notion of having conducted myself in some most ridiculous and extravagant fashion,--having insisted upon the horses being harnessed in some impossible mode, or made some demand or other totally impracticable. Cary, like a dear kind girl as she is, laughed and quizzed me out of my delusion, and showed me that it was the cursed imputation of that scoundrel of a landlord had given this erratic turn to my thoughts. The gout has settled in my left foot, and I now, with the exception of an occasional shoot of pain that I relieve by a shout, feel much better, and hope soon to be fit for the road. Poor Cary made me laugh by a story she picked up somewhere of a Scotch gentleman who had contracted with his vetturino to be carried from Genoa to Rome and fed on the road,--a very common arrangement. The journey was to occupy nine days; but wishing to secure a splendid "buona mano," the vetturino drove at a tremendous pace, and actually arrived in Rome on the eighth day, having almost killed his horses and exhausted himself. When he appeared before his traveller, expecting compliments on his speed, and a handsome recognition for his zeal, guess his astonishment to hear his self-panegyrics cut short by the pithy remark: "You drove very well, my friend; but we are not going to part just yet,--you have still another day to _feed_ me."