distant land. Save me from harm of soul
and body; give me back health and strength,
that I may serve Thee more faithfully, and be
able to bring others dependent on me to serve
Thee also, and add to Thy glories! Amen."

Sunday.—How sweet and delicious are
the mornings here; what soft airs blow
gently from these luxuriant trees and mountains!
One really grows fonder of the
place every moment. The mornings are
the most charming; ever so pastoral, and
yet it will seem but the pastoral of the
theatre or the opera—sham trees and shepherdesses;
and I feel all the time that the
corrupting Upas garden spreads its fatal
vanities over all. These pretty wells, enchanting
walks, innocent flowers, music,
lights, trees, ferns, what not—they could
hardly be, without this support. The odious
and plundering vice keeps up and pays
for all, even for the innocent blessings of
nature; and I doubt whether one is not
accessory before the act to those results in
accepting any benefit from so contaminated
a source, and lending one's countenance
in return to their doings. But this
is too much refining, and my pet at home
will smile at such scruples. I must not
set up to be a saint, and I shall do more
practical work if, by word or example, I
can save some light and careless soul from
the temptation. Some way I seem to
myself to be grown a little too virtuous
since I came here; but in presence of this
awful destroyer it is hard not to be serious.

Another of the baits to purchase the
good-will of the decent is the reading
room, flooded literally with journals of all
climes. Squire John Bull is paid special
attention to, by half a dozen of his favourite
Times, Pall- Mall, Morning Herald
even—though what put that journal in the
heads of the administration it would be
hard to tell—and the veteran Galignani.
But a glass door between the Times and
squire, who is stingy at heart, and resents
postage, and at the same time having to
subscribe to his club at home, where he
can have all these papers for nothing—
British flesh and blood could not stand
that; so he and his wife—I knew him at
once by his gold glass and complacent air
as he reads—come every morning at eleven
o'clock, and sit and devour their cheap
news till one or two. The greediness and
selfishness displayed as to getting papers
by these people is inconceivable. I do
say there is more of the little mean vices
engendered in that room than one could
possibly conceive in so small a space. The
moment he enters there is the questing eye
looking round with suspicion and eagerness
until he sees the mainsail of his Times
fluttering in another Briton's hand, an old
enemy—i.e. one who is a slow reader, and
who reads every word. He himself is a
slow reader, and reads every word; but
that is nothing to the point. A look of
dislike and anger spreads over his face;
but there is the other copy, also "in
hand"—in the hand of a dowager, with
glasses also—" that beast of a woman," he
tells his wife. The person in whose hands
he likes to see his Times is a young
"thing," a "chit of a girl," who just
skims over a column or two, reads the
Court Circular portion, and the account of
the latest opera. Indeed, he thinks that
she has no business to be reading at all.
He prowls about, looking at the owners of
other papers, as who should say, "Ugh,
you!" Now some one lays down a paper,
and he rushes at it, anticipating another
cormorant by a second: it is only the old
journal, not yesterday's. Then, with eyes
of discontent, he goes up to the reader in
possession of THE Times, and says, bitterly,
"I'll trouble you when you have done with
that;" to which the answer is a grunt.
And then he draws a chair close opposite
to him, and if glaring can hurry, or restless
moving of the chair, or impatient ejaculation,
he could not fail. When he does
secure it, what a read he has, and how he
does take it out of the others! If he could
he would have three or four—one to sit on,
one lying near him. And yet he is not a
bad man, I am sure, at home; but the
very atmosphere of this place, perverts
everything. Yet the French and Germans
in this room take the thing tranquilly.
They read their little newspaper quietly and
swiftly, with a little faint eagerness to get
possession of the Figaro, or some diverting
paper; but no one glares at his neighbour.
My Dora at home will send me out a
paper, so I shall be independent of these
rascals and their pitiful bribes.

Two o'clock.—The dogs in the street
drawing the little milk carts, harnessed so
prettily, and drawing so " willingly."
Honest Tray, with his broad jaws well
open, and he himself panting from the
heat, looks up every now and again to the
neat German girl who walks by him. When
she wants him to go on, she leads him
gently by his great yellow ear, as if it was
a bridle. When there are two together they
trot on merrily; but the work is too much
for the poor paws of a single one. When