Indeed I shall probably not attempt the latter, and though you will see lemon and myrtle trees rising tall and slim out of the marble floors and bending over tanks of running water, you will miss the vivid sparkling of the leaves, and you will not hear the unceasing song of the bubbling fountains. I wish I could report that I am doing much work. I am doing some, and think I see my way to one or two pot-boilers (the fatal, inevitable pot-boilers!); but distances here are great, and so is the heat, and there is not much that is within the compass of _sketching_, though there is endless paintable material. I am doing a bit in the great mosque, which is very delightful to me, in colour, and, if I can render it, may strike others in the same way. I am having the spot photographed in case I try to make a picture of it. The second p.-b. would probably be some unambitious corner of a court with a figure or two, _et voilà_. It is late and I am sleepy, so good-night and good-bye. I wish you gave me a brighter account of Lina; give her too my best love. It was hardly worth while, by-the-bye, to have my letters forwarded. I shall only get them, if at all, just before leaving Damascus next week! I fear I can't get back to England till end of third week in November.--Your affectionate son, FRED. In the autumn of 1877 Leighton revisited Spain. A letter dated September 21, 1877, Madrid, in which Leighton answers certain questions asked by Mrs. Mark Pattison concerning art galleries and dealers, ends with the following sentence:-- Thank you for what you tell me about Puvis de Chavannes' work. I admire the designs for Ste. Geneviève hugely, and am altogether an _aficionado_ of that odd, incomplete, but refined and poetic painter; but for emptiness of modelling he seeks his peer in vain. I am seeing Velasquez again for the third time; this is the place in which to see him in all his splendour, and in all his nakedness--but that would be a chapter, and not a hasty note.--Very truly yours, FRED LEIGHTON. From Spain Leighton crossed to Tangiers, whence he wrote:-- TANGIERS, _October 4, 1877_.