"We went a wet walk this morning, and from
under the umbrella there was a glimpse of heaven —
the other side a wet chaos of rocks and stones. A
thousand lovely white narcissus, growing singly in a
plain of the greenest grass. This told a tantalizing
tale ! Great bunches of primroses, too, by the road-
side ; but their flowers were all clammy and rusted
with rain. But I will stop at once, and say not
another word. Perhaps to-morrow the cloud may
have passed away, this being the ninth day of rain.
It seems strange to think of you at Mentone, leading
the same life of quiet days, full of sunshine and work ;
and I dare not think of the olive trees — they look so
beautiful and so far away 1 When we travelled from
Milan to Venice, on the 6th, the country was brown
and bare: returning on the 22nd, the magician had
touched it, and nothing was the same. Such vivid
living green I The mulberry trees all in leaf; green
vine-garlands festooned between, where there had been
dry brown ropes. The com had sprung up a foot
high, and everywhere in the fields there were yokes
of fat creamy oxen — the most smiling pictures of
spring, an Italian spring 1 — all along the road till past
Verona."

^^ BavetiOy May 6. — There is an utterly inde-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC



368 ENGLISH FEMALE ARTISTS.
