DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--Your letter comforts me particularly. I am so glad to think you find subjects to your mind. I have no especial desire for the view from S. Miniato, and indeed a plan we started in conversation with Mr. Smith this morning, namely, to have moderately sized initial letters--the opening one being an old Florentine in his _Lucco_ and generally the subjects being bits of landscape or Florentine building--seems to do away with any reason for having the landscape to begin with. The idea of having Tessa and the mules, or Nello's sanctum, smiles upon me, so pray feel free to choose the impression that urges itself most strongly. Your observation about the "che, che" is just the aid I besought from you. With that exception, I have confined myself, I believe, to such interjections as I find in the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in them, curiously enough, this exclamation now said to be so constant and "to mean everything" (according to our authority) does not seem to occur. Thank you. Pray let me have as many criticisms of that kind as you can. I am more gratified, I think, by your liking these opening chapters than I have yet been by anything in these nervous anxious weeks of decision about publication.--Very truly yours, M.E. LEWES. F. LEIGHTON, Esq. 16 BLANDFORD SQUARE, N.W., _Tuesday Evening_. DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--I am enchanted! purely delighted! which shall I begin with, to tell you that I delight in Baby's toes or that exquisite poetry in the scene where Romola is standing? Is it not a pleasant change to have that opening made through the walls of the city, so as to see the sky and the mountains? In the scene with Baldassarre and Tessa, also, the distant view is charming. Tessa and her Babkin are perfect--Baldassarre's is, as you say, an impossible face to draw, but you have seized the framework of the face well, both in this illustration and the previous one. I want to tell you that a man of some eminence in art was speaking of your drawings to a third person the other day as "remarkable" in a tone of genuine admiration. I don't know whether you care about that, but it is good to know that there is any genuine admiration in one's neighbours. I am glad to have the drawings left. I shall go now and have a long look at them. The February number will soon be out of my hands, but you will have it when it pleases the pigs--or printers.--Ever yours truly, M.E. LEWES. PARK HOTEL, LITTLE HAMPTON, SUSSEX, _September 10, '62_.