Sent letters to Ann, & Spiro Kokali.

Aperiently very fine. Rejolved to go to V. Appia, for the details of one of my “20 pictures.” So, first Macbeans, & then, at 11½, to the Coliseum, where G. was waiting for me. ― Then we walked out of the P. Sebastiana, & to the ruin I had to draw, by wh. time clouds had riz, & it began to rain & hail cats & dogs. So we had to shelter in a half tomb. ― G. talking of his wife said, dispiacque a mia madre che fosse Parguinota, e non Suliota.1 Their eldest brother was killed by the Turx at Prevera in 1846 aged 31. The Mother has never ceased to “rammentar”2 the fact. ― The Mother is & has always been a strictest disciplinarian: “ne Io, ne Spiro abbiam toccate donne prima di sposar.”3 ― But Χριζὺς is to be less spoken of: ― he, tho’ living with the rest, spends time on dissolute vimin. ― It ceased to rain at 2 ― & I got what outline I wanted: ― then wandered all along by the quarries, (by far the most beautiful bits of Roman Environs,) to the hills above Grotto Egeria, & so on, by the lane to the S. Gio. L. road, ― & wearily to V. Condotti by 6 or 6¼. Had a dinner from Spillman’s. Not well all day.

3 letters ― Ann, who has seen Sarah: ― it is a great pleasure that these sisters have met again, tho’ I share but little in the matter. ― R. Fowler ― D. still in England. & F.L. whose letter is very kind & nice. But the wretched Bassæ is still unhoused: the V. Chancellor having declared he can’t accept it without a “Competent voucher.” ― So, one does not know if even it will be hung at all.

Which fully accounts for my being half asleep. ―

Reading Adam Bede.4

X5 ?

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

  1. My mother was sorry she was a Parguinote and not a Suliot. [↩]
  2. Remember. [↩]
  3. Neither Spiro nor I ever touched a woman before getting married. [↩]
  4. George Eliot‘s first novel, published in 1859. [↩]