Ravenna Wednesday. Dearest Father. We woke yesterday morning and found that it was the most delicious sunny day after the rain, so we sallied forth early and saw all the sights. My curiosity concerning the Ferrarese painters is assuaged - they were a poor lot. But the place is fascinating. One of the nicest things we saw was Ariosto's charming red brick house over which he put a motto something after this kind "Parva sed apta mihi, sed non sordida." and a little more I don't remember. The sun was shining in his garden and all his lilac trees were flowering. We saw his MSS and Tasso's and Tasso's prison and all sorts of fine things and we came away late in the afternoon and journeyed through a splendid sunset to Ravenna which we reached at 7.30. The inn was quite full, fortunately I had written for rooms, but they were attics with tiled floors, the bedrooms of the proprietor and his daughter as we afterwards found. However we were very tired and I slept like a top and woke at 6.30 to find that it was another sunny morning straight from Paradise. Today we moved into nicer rooms, Mrs Green's opens onto a balcony where we sit and are very happy. What a place this is! We have been sightseeing all day and I am bewildered by the beauty of the mosaics. It's quite as interesting as I meant it to be and that's saying a great deal. It thrills me with excitement to see Theodoric's tomb and his palace - he didn't like this place as much as Verona, the history books say; do you remember his palace up on the hill which is a fort now? The most exciting thing is the tomb of Galla Placidia, a great enormous sarcophagus in which she sat on her throne, dressed in her imperial robes, for 1100 years, with a hole on one side of the sarcophagus so that you could look in and see her sitting in endless state. And in the end of the 16th century some mischievous children dropped a match in and she burnt up, she and her robes and her chair and her state and there's nothing left inside but ashes. In her chapel there are most beautiful mosaics, patterns of leaves and branches and stags drinking at fountains and a great cross at the top of all. We went out to St Apollinare in Classe and I climbed to the top of the tower and saw the pinetum and the sea beyond it, 3 miles away. It is most curious. There seems to be a great deal of the pinetum left, we shall pass it on our way to Rimini. Mrs Green wants to get back to Venice [Venezia] as soon as she can, so I shall go to Perugia on Friday from Rimini. I shall like seeing that line, but it's a long journey with 3 changes. This evening Mr Hogarth and Lady Galloway arrived from Venice. I'm rather oppressed by her, but we shan't see much of her, for she breakfasts at 12 and we leave at 2. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude