a beautiful, most beautiful afternoon

April 30th 1840

I arose this morning feeling more elastic than I have throughout the winter; for the breathing of the ocean air has wrought a very beneficial effect... What a beautiful, most beautiful afternoon this has been! It was a real happiness to live. If I had been merely a vegetable, a hawthorn-bush, for instance, I must have been happy in such an air and sunshine; but, having a mind and a soul, ... I enjoyed somewhat more than mere vegetable happiness... The footsteps of May can be traced upon the islands in the harbour, and I have been watching the tints of green upon them gradually deepening, till now they are almost as beautiful as they ever can be.

Wrote the last page (199th MS.) of the Blithedale Romance.

April 30th. [1852]

Wrote the last page (199th MS.) of the Blithedale Romance.

stuck in the mud

Boston, April 30th, 6 P. M., 1839

Belovedest:

Your sweetest of all letters found me at the Custom House, where I had almost just arrived, having been engaged all the forenoon in measuring twenty chaldrons of coal -- which dull occupation was enlivened by frequent brawls and amicable discussions with a crew of funny little Frenchmen from Acadie. I know not whether your letter was a surprise to me it seems to me that I had a prophetic faith that the Dove would visit me but at any rate, it was a joy, as it always is; tor my spirit turns to you from all trouble and all pleasure. This forenoon I could not wait as I generally do, to be in solitude before opening your letter; for I exacted, to be busy all the afternoon, and was already tired with working yesterday and today; and my heart longed to drink your thoughts and feelings, as a parched throat for cold water. So I pressed the Dove to my lips (turning my head away, so that nobody saw me) and then broke the seal. I do think it is the dearest letter you have written, but i think so of each successive one; so you need not imagine that you have outdone yourself in this instance. How did I live before I knew you before I possessed your affection! I reckon upon your love as something that is to endure when everything that can perish has perished though my trust is some times mingled with fear, because I feel myself unworthy of your love. But if I am worthy of it you will always love me; and if there be anything good and pure in me, it will be proved by my always loving you.

After dinner, I had to journey over to East Cambridge, expecting to measure a cargo of coal
there; but the vessel had stuck in the mud on her way thither, so that nothing could be done till tomorrow morning. It must have been my guardian angel that steered her upon that mud-bank, for I really needed rest. Did you lead the vessel astray, my Dove? I did not stop to inquire into particulars, but returned home forthwith, and locked my door, and threw myself on the bed, with your letter in my hand. I read it over slowly and peacefully, and then folding it up, I rested my heart upon it, and fell fast asleep. [continued on May 3rd]

the Faun of Praxiteles

April 30th. [1858]

I went yesterday to the sculpture gallery of the Capitol, and looked pretty thoroughly through the busts of the illustrious men, and less particularly at those of the emperors and their relatives. I likewise took particular note of the Faun of Praxiteles, because the idea keeps recurring to me of writing a little romance about it, and for that reason I shall endeavour to set down a somewhat minutely itemized detail of the statue and its surroundings . . .

We have had beautiful weather for two or three days, very warm in the sun, yet always freshened by the gentle life of a breeze, and quite cool enough the moment you pass within the limit of the shade . . . In the morning, there are few people there (on the Pincian) except the gardeners, lazily trimming the borders, or filling their watering-pots out of the marble-brimmed basin of the fountain; French soldiers, in their long mixed blue surtouts, and wide scarlet pantaloons, chatting with here and there a nursery maid and playing with the child in her care; and perhaps a few smokers, . . . choosing each a marble seat or wooden bench in sunshine or shade as best suits him. In the afternoon, especially within an hour or two of sunset, the gardens are much more populous, and the seats, except when the sun falls full upon them, are hard to come by. Ladies arrive in carriages, splendidly dressed ; children are abundant, much impeded in their frolics, and rendered stiff and stately by the finery which they wear; English gentlemen, and Americans with their wives and families; the flower of the Roman population, too, both male and female, mostly dressed with great nicety; but a large intermixture of artists, shabbily picturesque ; and other persons, not of the first stamp. A French band, comprising a great many brass instruments, by-and-by begins to play; and what with music, sunshine, a delightful atmosphere, flowers, grass, well-kept pathways, bordered with box-hedges, pines, cypresses, horse-chestnuts, flowering-shrubs, and all manner of cultivated beauty, the scene is a very lively and agreeable one. The fine equipages that drive round and round through the carriagepaths are another noticeable item. The Roman aristocracy are magnificent in their aspect, driving abroad with beautiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, sometimes as many as three behind and one sitting by the coachman.

this morning I am made all over anew

28 April 1841

I was caught by a cold during my visit to Boston. It has not affected my whole frame, but took entire possession of my head, as being the weakest and most vulnerable part. Never did anybody sneeze with such vehemence and frequency; and my poor brain has been in a thick fog, or, rather, it seemed as if my head were stuffed with coarse wool... Sometimes I wanted to wrench it off, and give it a great kick, like a football.

This annoyance has made me endure the bad weather with even less than ordinary patience; and my faith was so far exhausted that, when they told me yesterday that the sun was setting clear, I would not even turn my eyes towards the west. But this morning I am made all over anew, and have no greater remnant of my cold than will serve as an excuse for doing no work to-day.

The family has been dismal and dolorous through out the storm. The night before last, William Allen was stung by a wasp on the eyelid; whereupon the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude, so that, at the breakfast-table, one half of him looked like a blind giant (the eye being closed), and the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous aspect that I was constrained to laugh out of sheer pity. The same day a colony of wasps was discovered in my chamber, where they had remained throughout the winter, and were now just bestirring themselves, doubtless with the intention of stinging me from head to foot. A similar discovery was made in Mr. Farley s room. In short, we seem to have taken up our abode in a wasps nest. Thus you see a rural life is not one of unbroken quiet and serenity.

If the middle of the day prove warm and pleasant, I promise myself to take a walk... I have taken one walk with Mr. Farley and I could not have believed that there was such seclusion at so short a distance from a great city. Many spots seem hardly to have been visited for ages, not since John Eliot preached to the Indians here. If we were to travel a thousand miles, we could not escape the world more completely than we can here.

I read no newspapers, and hardly remember who is President, and feel as if I had no more concern with what other people trouble themselves about than if I dwelt in another planet.

The fragrance of the arbutus is spicy and exquisite.

April 28th. [1851]

For a week we have found the trailing arbutus pretty abundant in the woods. A day or two since, Una found a few purple violets, and yesterday a dandelion in bloom. The fragrance of the arbutus is spicy and exquisite.

All other interests appear like shadows and trifles; but love is a reality

Brook Farm, April 28th, 1841 -- 7 A. M.

Mine ownest, what a beautiful bright morning is this! I do trust that thou hast not suffered so much from the late tremendous weather, as to be unable not to go abroad in the sunshine. I tremble, almost, to think how thy tender frame has been shaken by that continual cough, which can not but have grown more inveterate throughout these interminable ages of east wind. At times, dearest, it has seemed an absolute necessity for me to see thee and find out for a certain truth whether thou wert well or ill. Even hadst thou been here, thou wouldst have been penetrated to the core with the chill blast. Then how must thou have been afflicted, where it comes directly from the sea.

Belovedest, thy husband was caught by a cold, during his visit to Boston. It has not affected his whole frame, but took entire possession of his head, as being the weakest and most vulnerable part. Never didst thou hear anybody sneeze with such vehemence and frequency; and his poor brain has been in a thick fog or rather, it seemed as if his head were stuffeel with coarse wool. I know not when I have been so pestered before; and sometimes I wanted to wrench off my head, and give it a great kick, like a foot-ball. This annoyance has made me endure the bad weather with even less than ordinary patience; and my faith was so far exhausted, that, when they told me yesterday that the sun was setting clear, I would not even turn my eyes towards the west. But, this morning, I am made all over anew; and have no greater remnant of my cold, than will serve as an excuse for doing no work to-day. Dearest, do not let Mrs. Ripley frighten thee with, apocryphal accounts of my indisposition. I have told thee the whole truth. I do believe that she delights to disquiet people with doubts and fears about their closest friends; for, once or twice, she has made thy cough a bugbear to thy husband. Nevertheless, I will not judge too harshly of the good lady, because I like her very well, in many respects.

The family has been dismal and dolorous, throughout the storm. The night before last, William Allen was stung by a wasp, on the eyelid: whereupon. the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude: so that, at the breakfast table, one half of him looked like a blind giant (the eye being closed) ami the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous aspect, that thy husband was constrained to laugh, out of sheer pity. The same day, a colony of wasps was discovered in thy husband's chamber, where they had remained throughout the winter, and were now just bestirring themselves, doubtless with the intention of stinging me from head to foot. Thou wilt readily believe, that not one of the accursed crew escaped my righteous vengeance. A similar discovery was made in Mr. Farley's room. In short, we seem to have taken up our abode in a wasps nest. Thus thou seest, belovedest, that a rural life is not one of unbroken quiet and serenity.

It the middle of the day prove warm and pleasant, thy husband promises himself to take a walk, in every step of which thou shalt be his companion. Oh, how I long for thee to stay with me: in reality, among the hills, and dales, and woods, of our home. I have taken one walk, with Mr. Farley; and I could not have believed that there was such seclusion, at so short a distance from a great city. Many spots seem hardly to have been visited for ages not since John Eliot preached to the Indians here. It we went to travel a thousand miles, we could not escape the world more completely than we can here.

Sweetest, I long unspeakably to see thee it is only the thought of thee that draws my spirit out of this solitude. Otherwise, I care nothing for the world nor its affairs. I read no newspapers, and hardly remember who is President; and feel as if I had no more concern with what other people trouble themselves about, than if I dwelt in another planet. But, still, thou drawest me to thee continually; and so I can realise how a departed spirit feels, while looking back from another world to the beloved ones of this. All other interests appear like shadows and trifles; but love is a reality, which makes the spirit still an inhabitant of the world which it has quitted.

Ownest wife, if Mr. Kipley comes into Boston on Sunday, it is my purpose to accompany him. Otherwise, thou mayst look for nip some time during the ensuing week. Be happy, dearest; and above all, do shake off that tremendous cough. Take great care of thyself, and never venture out when there is the least breath of east-wind; but spread thy wings in the sunshine, and be joyous as itself.

God bless thee.
THINE OWNEST.

Will thy father have the goodness to leave the letter for Colonel Hall at the Post Office?

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
13 West street,
Boston.

with the ladies of the President's family

Washington, April 28th, Thursday. 1853

Dearest,

The President has asked me to remain in the city a few days longer, for particular reasons; but I think I shall he free to leave by Saturday. It is very queer how much I have done for other people and myself since my arrival here. Colonel Miller is to be here to-night. Ticknor stands by me manfully, and will not quit me until we see Boston again.

I went to Mount Vernon yesterday with the ladies of the President's family. Thou never sawst such a beautiful and blossoming Spring as we have here.

Expect me early in next week. How I long to be in thy arms is impossible to tell. Tell the children I love them all.

THINEST.

This is another misty morning, ungenial in aspect, but kinder than it looks

Thursday, April 27th. [1843]

I took a walk into the fields, and round our opposite hill, yesterday noon, but made no very remarkable observation. The frogs have begun their concerts, though not as yet with a full choir. I found no violets nor anemones, nor any thing in the likeness of a flower, though I looked carefully along the shelter of the stone walls, and in all spots apparently propitious. I ascended the hill, and had a wide prospect of a swollen river, extending around me in a semi-circle of three or four miles, and rendering the view much finer than in summer, had there only been foliage. It seemed like the formation of a new world; for islands were everywhere emerging, and capes extending forth into the flood; and these tracts, which were thus won from the watery empire, were among the greenest in the landscape. The moment the deluge leaves them, Nature asserts them to be her property by covering them with verdure; or perhaps the grass had been growing under the water. On the hill-top where I stood, the grass had scarcely begun to sprout; and I observed that even those places which looked greenest in the distance were but scantily grass-covered when I actually reached them. It was hope that painted them so bright.

Last evening we saw a bright light on the river, betokening that a boat's party were engaged in spearing fish. It looked like a descended star, like red Mars, and, as the water was perfectly smooth, its gleam was reflected downward into the depths. It is a very picturesque sight. In the deep quiet of the night I suddenly heard the light and lively note of a bird from a neighbouring tree, a real song, such as those which greet the purple dawn, or mingle with the yellow sunshine. What could the little bird mean by pouring it forth at midnight? Probably the note gushed out from the midst of a dream, in which he fancied himself in Paradise with his mate; and, suddenly awaking, he found he was on a cold, leafless bough, with a New England mist penetrating through his feathers. That was a sad exchange of imagination for reality; but if he found his mate beside him, all was well.

This is another misty morning, ungenial in aspect, but kinder than it looks; for it paints the hills and valleys with a richer brush than the sunshine could. There is more verdure now than when I looked out of the window an hour ago. The willowtree opposite my study window is ready to put forth its leaves. There are some objections to willows. It is not a dry and cleanly tree; it impresses me with an association of sliminess; and no trees, I think, are perfectly satisfactory, which have not a firm and hard texture of trunk and branches. But the willow is almost the earliest to put forth its leaves, and the last to scatter them on the ground; and during the whole winter its yellow twigs give it a sunny aspect, which is not without a cheering influence in a proper point of view. Our old house would lose much were this willow to be cut down, with its golden crown over the roof in winter, and its heap of summer verdure. The present Mr. Ripley planted it, fifty years ago, or thereabouts.

But the glory of a picture fades like that of a flower.

April 27th. [1858]

To-day we have all been with Mr. Akers to some studios of painters; first to that of Mr. Wilde, an artist originally from Boston. His pictures are principally of scenes from Venice, and are miracles of colour, being as bright as if the light were transmitted through rubies and sapphires. And yet, after contemplating them awhile, we became convinced that the painter had not gone in the least beyond nature, but, on the contrary, had fallen short of brilliancies which no palette, or skill, or boldness in using colour, could attain. I do not quite know whether it is best to attempt these things. They may be found in nature, no doubt, but always so tempered by what surrounds them so put out of sight even while they seem full before our eyes -- that we question the accuracy of a faithful reproduction of them on canvas. There was a picture of sunset, the whole sky of which would have out shone any gilded frame that could have been put around it. There was a most gorgeous sketch of a handful of weeds and leaves, such as may be seen strewing acres of forest-ground in an American autumn. I doubt whether any other man has ever ventured to paint a picture like either of these two -- the Italian sunset or the American autumnal foliage. Mr. Wilde, who is still young, talked with genuine feeling and enthusiasm of his art, and is certainly a man of genius.

We next went to the studio of an elderly Swiss artist, named Müller, I believe, where we looked at a great many water-colour and crayon drawings of scenes in Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. The artist was a quiet, respectable, somewhat heavylooking old gentleman, from whose aspect one would expect a plodding pertinacity of character rather than quickness of sensibility. He must have united both these qualities, however, to produce such pictures as these -- such faithful transcripts of whatever Nature has most beautiful to show, and which she shows only to those who love her deeply and patiently. They are wonderful pictures -- compressing plains, seas, and mountains, with miles and miles of distance, into the space of a foot or two without crowding anything or leaving out a feature, and diffusing the free, blue atmosphere throughout. The works of the English water-colour artists which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition seemed to me nowise equal to these. Now, here are three artists Mr. Browne, Mr. Wilde, and Mr. Müller -- who have smitten me with vast admiration within these few days past, while I am continually turning away disappointed from the landscapes of the most famous among the old masters, unable to find any charm or illusion in them. Yet I suppose Claude, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa must have won their renown by real achievements. But the glory of a picture fades like that of a flower.

Contiguous to Mr. Müller's studio was that of a young German artist, not long resident in Rome, and Mr. Akers proposed that we should go in there, as a matter of kindness to the young man, who is scarcely known at all, and seldom has a visitor to look at his pictures. His studio comprised his whole establishmen; for there was his little bed, with its white drapery, in a corner of the small room, and his dressing-table, with its brushes and combs, while the easel and the few sketches of Italian scenes and figures occupied the foreground. I did not like his pictures very well, but would gladly have bought them all if I could have afforded it the artist looked so cheerful, patient, and quiet, doubtless amidst huge discouragement. He is probably stubborn of purpose, and is the sort of man who will improve with every year of his life. We could not speak his language, and were therefore spared the difficulty of paying him any compliments; but Miss Shepard said a few kind words to him in German, and seemed quite to win his heart, insomuch that he followed her with bows and smiles a long way down the staircase. It is a terrible business, this looking at pictures, whether good or bad, in the presence of the artists who paint them; it is as great a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses. It takes away all my pleasure in seeing the pictures, and even makes me question the genuineness of the impressions which I receive from them.

After this latter visit Mr. Akers conducted us to the shop of the jeweller Castellani, who is a great reproducer of ornaments in the old Roman and Etruscan fashion. These antique styles are very fashionable just now, and some of the specimens he showed us were certainly very beautiful, though I doubt whether their quaintness and old-time curiousness, as patterns of gewgaws dug out of immemorial tombs, be not their greatest charm. We saw the toilette-case of an Etruscan lady -- that is to say, a modern imitation of it with her rings for summer and winter, and for every day of the week, and for thumb and fingers; her ivory comb; her bracelets; and more knickknacks than I can half remember. Splendid things of our own time were likewise shown us; a necklace of diamonds worth eighteen thousand scudi, together with emeralds and opals and great pearls. Finally we came away, and my wife and Miss Shepard were taken up by the Misses Weston, who drove with them to visit the Villa Albani. During their drive my wife happened to raise her arm, and Miss Shepard espied a little Greek cross of gold which had attached itself to the lace of her sleeve. . . Pray heaven the jeweller may not discover his loss before we have time to restore the spoil! He is apparently so free and careless in displaying his precious wares -- putting inestimable gems and brooches great and small into the hands of strangers like ourselves, and leaving scores of them strewn on the top of his counter that it would seem easy enough to take a diamond or two; but I suspect there must needs be a sharp eye somewhere. Before we left the shop he requested me to honour him with my autograph in a large book that was full of the names of his visitors. This is probably a measure of precaution.

Nature does her best to beautify this disarray.

April 26th. [1843]

Here is another misty day, muffling the sun. The lilac shrubs under my study-window are almost in leaf. In two or three days more I may put forth my hand and pluck a green bough. These lilacs appear to be very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of their prime. Old age has a singular aspect in lilacs, rose-bushes, and other ornamental shrubs. It seems as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental who can give the world nothing but flowers should die young, and never be seen with grey hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flowershrubs with mossy bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves in whatever fashion they please, they are still respectable, even if they afford us only an apple or two in a season, or none at all. Human flower-shrubs, if they will grow old on earth, should, beside their lovely blossoms, bear some kind of fruit that will satisfy earthly appetites ; else men will not be satisfied that the moss should gather on them.

Winter and spring are now struggling for the mastery in my study; and I yield somewhat to each, and wholly to neither. The window is open, and there is a fire in the stove. The day when the window is first thrown open should be an epoch in the year; but I have forgotten to record it. Seventy or eighty springs have visited this old house; and sixty of them found old Dr. Ripley here, not always old, it is true, but gradually getting wrinkles and grey hairs, and looking more and more the picture of winter. But he was no flower-shrub, but one of those fruit-trees or timber-trees that acquire a grace with their old age. Last spring found this house solitary for the first time since it was built; and now again she peeps into our open windows and finds new faces here.

It is remarkable how much uncleanness winter brings with it, or leaves behind it... The yard, garden, and avenue, which should be my department, require a great amount of labour. The avenue is strewed with withered leaves,-- the whole crop, apparently, of last year,-- some of which are now raked into heaps; and we intend to make a bonfire of them... There are quantities of decayed branches, which one tempest after another has flung down, black and rotten. In the garden are the old cabbages which we did not think worth gathering last autumn, and the dry bean-vines, and the withered stalks of the asparagus-bed; in short, all the wrecks of the departed year,-- its mouldering relics, its dry bones. It is a pity that the world cannot be made over anew every spring. Then, in the yard, there are the piles of firewood, which I ought to have sawed and thrown into the shed long since, but which will cumber the earth, I fear, till June, at least. Quantities of chips are strewn about, and on removing them we find the yellow stalks of grass sprouting underneath. Nature does her best to beautify this disarray. The grass springs up most industriously, especially in sheltered and sunny angles of the buildings, or round the doorsteps, a locality which seems particularly favourable to its growth; for it is already high enough to bend over and wave in the wind. I was surprised to observe that some weeds (especially a plant that stains the fingers with its yellow juice) had lived, and retained their freshness and sap as perfectly as in summer, through all the frosts and snows of last winter. I saw them, the last green thing, in the autumn; and here they are again, the first in the spring.

Why has not Dr. Wesselhoeft cured thy thumb?

Navy Yard, April 26th, 1850

Ownest wife,

Thy letter (dated 22d, but postmarked this very day) has just arrived, and perplexed me exceedingly with its strange aspect. Thy poor dear thumb! I am afraid it puts thee to unspeakable pain and trouble, and I feel as if I ought to be with thee; especially as Una is not well. What is the matter? anything except her mouth? I almost wish thou hadst told me to come back.

It rained so continually on the day of my departure that I was not able to get over to the Navy Yard, but had to put up at the Rockingham House. Being recognized there, I was immediately lugged into society, whether I would or no; taking tea at one place, and spending the evening at another. I have since dined out, and been invited to a party but escaped this latter infliction. Bridge's house, however, is the quietest place imaginable, and I only wish thou amidst be here, until our Lenox home is ready. I long to see thee, and am sad for want of thee. And thou too so comfortless in all that turmoil and confusion!

I have been waiting for thee to write; else I should have written before, though with nothing to say to thee save the unimportant fact that I love thee better than ever before, and that I can not be at peace away from thee. Why has not Dr. Wesselhoeft cured thy thumb? Thou never must hereafter do any work whatever; thou wast not made strong, and always sufferest tenfold the value of thy activities. Thou didst much amiss, to marry a husband who cannot keep thee like a lady, as Bridge does his wife, and as I should so delight to keep thee, doing only beautiful things, and reposing in luxurious chairs, and with servants to go and to come. Thou hast a hard lot in life; and so have I that witness it, and can do little or nothing to help thee. Again I wish that thou hadst told me to come back; or, at least, whether I should come or no. Four days more will bring us to the first of May, which is next Wednesday; and it was my purpose to return then. Thou wilt get this letter, I suppose, tomorrow morning, and, if desirable, might send to me by express the same day; and I could leave here on Monday morning. On looking at the Pathfinder Guide, I find that a train leaves Portsmouth for Boston at 5 o'clock P.M. Shouldst thou send me a message by the 11 o'clock train, I might return and be with thee tomorrow (Saturday) evening, before 8 o'clock. I should come without being recalled; only that it seems a sin to add another human being to the multitudinous chaos of that house.

I cannot write. Thou hast our home and all our interests, about thee, and away from thee there is only emptiness so what have I to write about?

THINE OWNEST HUSBAND.

P.S. If thou sendest for me to-morrow, and I do not come, thou must conclude that the express did not reach me.

Mrs. Sophia A. Hawthorne,
Care of Dr. Nathl. Peabody,
Boston, Massachusetts.

Spring is advancing

April 25th 1843

Spring is advancing, sometimes with sunny days, and sometimes, as is the case now, with chill, moist, sullen ones. There is an influence in the season that makes it almost impossible for me to bring my mind down to literary employment; perhaps because several months pretty constant work has exhausted that species of energy, perhaps because in spring it is more natural to labour actively than to think. But my impulse now is to be idle altogether, to lie in the sun, or wander about and look at the revival of Nature from her deathlike slumber, or to be borne down the current of the river in my boat. If I had wings, I would gladly fly; yet would prefer to be wafted along by a breeze, sometimes alighting on a patch of green grass, then gently whirled away to a still sunnier spot... Oh, how blest should I be were there nothing to do! Then I would watch every inch and hair s breadth of the progress of the season; and not a leaf should put itself forth, in the vicinity of our old mansion, without my noting it. But now, with the burden of a continual task upon me, I have not freedom of mind to make such observations. I merely see what is going on in a very general way. The snow, which, two or three weeks ago, covered hill and valley, is now diminished to one or two solitary specks in the visible landscape; though doubtless there are still heaps of it in the shady places in the woods. There have been no violent rains to carry it off: it has diminished gradually, inch by inch, and day after day; and I observed, along the roadside, that the green blades of grass had sometimes sprouted on the very edge of the snow-drift the moment that the earth was uncovered.

The pastures and grass -fields have not yet a general effect of green; nor have they that cheerless brown tint which they wear in later autumn, when vegetation has entirely ceased. There is now a suspicion of verdure, the faint shadow of it, but not the warm reality. Sometimes, in a happy exposure, there is one such tract across the river, the carefully cultivated mowing-field, in front of an old red home stead, such patches of land wear a beautiful and tender green, which no other season will equal; because, let the grass be green as it may hereafter, it will not be so set off by surrounding barrenness. The trees in our orchard, and elsewhere, have as yet no leaves ; yet to the most careless eye they appealfull of life and vegetable blood. It seems as if, by one magic touch, they might instantaneously put forth all their foliage, and the wind, which now sighs through their naked branches, might all at once find itself impeded by innumerable leaves. This sudden development would be scarcely more wonderful than the gleam of verdure which often brightens, in a moment, as it were, along the slope of a bank or roadside. It is like a gleam of sunlight. Just now it was brown, like the rest of the scenery: look again, and there is an apparition of green grass. The Spring, no doubt, comes onward with fleeter footsteps, because Winter has lingered so long that, at best, she can hardly retrieve half the allotted term of her reign.

The river, this season, has encroached farther on the land than it has been known to do for twenty years past. It has formed along its course a succession of lakes, with a current through the midst. My boat has lain at the bottom of the orchard, in very convenient proximity to the house. It has borne me over stone fences; and, a few days ago, Ellery Channing and I passed through two rails into the great northern road, along which we paddled for some distance. The trees have a singular appearance in the midst of waters. The curtailment of their trunks quite destroys the proportions of the whole tree; and we become conscious of a regularity and propriety in the forms of Nature, by the effect of this abbreviation. The waters are now subsiding, but gradually. Islands become annexed to the mainland, and other islands emerge from the flood, and will soon, likewise, be connected with the continent. We have seen on a small scale the process of the deluge, and can now witness that of the reappearance of the earth.

Crows visited us long before the snow was off. They seem mostly to have departed now, or else to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they haunt all summer long, Ducks came in great numbers, and many sportsmen went in pursuit of them, along the river, but they also have disappeared. Gulls come up from seaward, and soar high overhead, flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are among the most picturesque birds that I am acquainted with; indeed, quite the most so, because the manner of their flight makes them almost stationary parts of the landscape. The imagination has time to rest upon them; they have not flitted away in a moment. You go up among the clouds, and lay hold of these soaring gulls, and repose with them upon the sustaining atmosphere. The smaller birds, the birds that build their nests in our trees, and sing for us at morning-red, I will not describe... But I must mention the great companies of blackbirds more than the famous "four-and-twenty" who were baked in a pie that congregate on the tops of contiguous trees, and vociferate with all the clamour of a turbulent political meeting. Politics must certainly be the subject of such a tumultuous debate; but still there is a melody in each individual utterance, and a harmony in the general effect. Mr. Thoreau tells me that these noisy assemblages consist of three different species of blackbirds; but I forget the other two. Robins have been long among us, and swallows have more recently arrived.

I love thee. I love thee.

54 Pinckney St., Monday, 11 o'clock A.M. [1842]

Most dear love,

I have been caught by a personage who has been in search of me for two or three days, and shall be compelled to devote this unfortunate evening to him, instead of to my Dove. Dost thou regret it? -- so does thy poor husband, who loves thee infinitely, and needs thee continually. Art thou well to-day very dearest? How naughty was I, last night, to contend against thy magnetic influence, and turn it against thyself! I will not do so again. My head has been in pain for thine -- at least my heart has. Thou wast very sweet and lovely, last night -- so art thou always.

Belovedest, thou knowest not how I yearn for thee -- how I long and pray for the time when we may be together without disturbance -- when absence shall be a rare exception to our daily life. My heart will blossom like a rose, when it can be always under thy daily influence when the dew of thy love will he falling upon it, every moment.

Most sweet, lest I should not be able to avoid another engagement for tomorrow evening, I think it best for me to come in the afternoon shortly after two o clock, on Tuesday. Canst thou devote so much of thy precious day to my unworthiness? Unless I hear from thee, I shall come. I love thee. I love thee.

Dearest, I kiss thee with my whole spirit.

Thy husband,

THEODORE DE L'AUBEPINE.
Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Mass.

The Transfiguration

April 25th. [1858]

Night before last my wife and I took a moonlight ramble through Rome, it being a very beautiful night, warm enough for comfort, and with no perceptible dew or dampness. We set out at about nine o'clock, and our general direction being towards the Coliseum, we soon came to the Fountain of Trevi, full on the front of which the moonlight fell, making Bernini's sculptures look stately and beautiful; though the semicircular gush and fall of the cascade, arid the many jets of the water, pouring and bubbling into the great marble basin, are of far more account than Neptune and his steeds, and the rest of the figures . . .

We ascended the Capitoline hill, and I felt a satisfaction in placing my hand on those immense blocks of stone, the remains of the ancient Capitol, which form the foundation of the present edifice, and will make a sure basis for as many edifices as posterity may choose to rear upon it till the end of the world. It is wonderful, the solidity with which those old Romans built; one would suppose they contemplated the whole course of Time as the only limit of their individual life. This is not so strange in the days of the Republic, when, probably, they believed in the permanence of their institutions; but they still seemed to build for eternity in the reigns of the emperors, when neither rulers nor people had any faith or moral substance, or laid any earnest grasp on life.

Reaching the top of the Capitoline hill, we ascended the steps of the portal of the Palace of the Senator, and looked down into the piazza, with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of it. The architecture that surrounds the piazza is very ineffective; and so, in my opinion, are all the other architectural works of Michael Angelo, including St. Peter's itself, of which he has made as little as could possibly be made of such a vast pile of material. He balances everything in such a way that it seems but half of itself.

We soon descended into the piazza, and walked round and round the statue of Marcus Aurelius, contemplating it from every point and admiring it in all. . . On these beautiful moonlight nights, Rome appears to keep awake and stirring, though in a quiet and decorous way. It is, in fact, the pleasantest time for promenades, and we both felt less wearied than by any promenade in the day-time, of similar extent, since our residence in Rome. In future, I mean to walk often after nightfall.

Yesterday, we set out betimes, and ascended the dome of St. Peter's. The best view of the interior of the church, I think, is from the first gallery beneath the dome. The whole inside of the dome is set with mosaic-work, the separate pieces being, so far as I could see, about half an inch square. Emerging on the roof, we had a fine view of all the surrounding Rome, including the Mediterranean Sea in the remote distance. Above us still rose the whole mountain of the great dome, and it made an impression on me of greater height and size than I had yet been able to receive. The copper ball at the summit looked hardly bigger than a man could lift ; and yet, a little while afterwards, U----, J-----, and I stood all together in that ball, which could have contained a dozen more along with us. The esplanade of the roof is, of course, very extensive; and along the front of it are ranged the statues which we see from below, and which, on nearer examination, prove to be roughlyhewn giants. There is a small house on the roof, where, probably, the custodes of this part of the edifice reside; and there is a fountain gushing abundantly into a stone trough, that looked like an old sarcophagus. It is strange where the water comes from at such a height. The children tasted it, and pronounced it very warm and disagreeable. After taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, which summoned a man, who directed us towards a door in the side of the dome, where a custode was waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, people sometimes ride on donkeys. The rest of the way we mounted steep and narrow staircases, winding round within the wall, or between the two walls of the dome, and growing narrower and steeper, till, finally, there is but a perpendicular iron ladder, by means of which to climb into the copper ball. Except through small windows and peep-holes, there is no external prospect of a higher point than the roof of the church. Just beneath the ball there is a circular room capable of containing a large company, and a door which ought to give access to a gallery on the outside; but the custode informed us that this door is never opened. As I have said, U----, J-----, and I clambered into the copper ball, which we found as hot as an oven; and, after putting our hands on its top, and on the summit of St. Peter's, were glad to clamber down again. I have made some mistake, after all, in my narration. There certainly is a circular balcony at the top of the dome, for I remember walking round it, and looking not only across the country, but downwards along the ribs of the dome; to which are attached the iron contrivances for illuminating it on Easter Sunday . . .

Before leaving the church we went to look at the mosaic copy of the Transfiguration, because we were going to see the original in the Vatican, and wished to compare the two. Going round to the entrance of the Vatican, we went first to the manufactory of mosaics, to which we had a ticket of admission. We found it a long series of rooms, in which the mosaic artists were at work, chiefly in making some medallions of the heads of saints for the new church of St. Paul's. It was rather coarse work, and it seemed to me that the mosaic copy was somewhat stiifer and more wooden than the original, the bits of stone not flowing into colour quite so freely as paint from a brush. There was no large picture now in process of being copied; but two or three artists were employed on small and delicate subjects. One had a Holy Family of Raphael in hand; and the Sibyls of Guercino and Domenichino were hanging on the wall, apparently ready to be put into mosaic. Wherever great skill and delicacy on the artists' part were necessary, they seemed quite adequate to the occasion; but, after all, a mosaic of any celebrated picture is but a copy of a copy. The substance employed is a stone-paste, of innumerable different views, and in bits of various sizes, quantities of which were seen in cases along the whole series of rooms.

We next ascended an amazing height of staircases, and walked along I know not what extent of passages, . . . till we reached the picture gallery of the Vatican, into which I had never been before. There are but three rooms, all lined with red velvet, on which hung about fifty pictures, each one of them, no doubt, worthy to be considered a masterpiece. In the first room were three Murillos, all so beautiful that I could have spent the day happily in looking at either of them; for, methinks, of all painters he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy these pictures now, however, because in the next room, and visible through the open door, hung the Transfiguration. Approaching it, I felt that the picture was worthy of its fame, and was far better than I could at once appreciate; admirably preserved, too, though I fully believe it must have possessed a charm when it left Raphael's hand that has now vanished for ever. As church furniture and an external adornment, the mosaic copy is preferable to the original, but no copy could ever reproduce all the life and expression which we see here. Opposite to it hangs the Communion of St. Jerome -- the aged, dying saint, half torpid with death already, partaking of the sacrament, and a sunny garland of cherubs in the upper part of the picture, looking down upon him, and quite comforting the spectator with the idea that the old man needs only to be quite dead in order to flit away with them. As for the other pictures, I did but glance at, and have forgotten them.

The Transfiguration is finished with great minuteness and detail, the weeds and blades of grass in the foreground being as distinct as if they were growing in a natural soil. A partly-decayed stick of wood, with the bark, is likewise given in close imitation of nature. The reflection of a foot of one of the Apostles is seen in a pool of water at the verge of the picture. One or two heads and arms seem almost to project from the canvas. There is great lifelikeness and reality, as well as higher qualities. The face of Jesus, being so high aloft and so small in the distance, I could not well see; but I am impressed with the idea that it looks too much like human flesh and blood to be in keeping with the celestial aspect of the figure, or with the probabilities of the scene, when the divinity and immortality of the Saviour beamed from within him through the earthly features that ordinarily shaded him. As regards the composition of the picture, I am not convinced of the propriety of its being in two so distinctly separate parts the upper portion not thinking of the lower, and the lower portion not being aware of the higher. It symbolises, however, the spiritual shortsightedness of mankind that, amid the trouble and grief of the lower picture, not a single individual, either of those who seek help or those who would willingly afford it, lifts his eyes to that region, one glimpse of which would set everything right. One or two of the disciples point upward, but without really knowing what abundance of help is to be had there.

I find I am a true believer in homeopathy

Salem, April 24th, 1846. 6 P. M.

Ownest dearest,

I have this moment received the packet and thy letter, and cannot tolerate that thou shouldst not have a word from thy husband tomorrow morning. Truly, Castle Dismal has seemed darker than ever, since I returned to it; and not only to me, but to its other inmates. Louisa spoke of the awful stillness of the house, and said she could not bear to give Una's old shoes to that little Lines child, and was going to keep them herself. I rejoiced her much, by telling her of Una's home-sickness.

Fees were tolerably good, yesterday and to day; and I [do not] doubt we shall have enough to live on, during thy continuance in Boston for which let us be thankful.

Bridge came to see me this afternoon, and says Mary Pray has consented to come to thee; and by this time, I hope, thou hast her. Thou canst not think what a peace I enjoy in the consideration that thou art within reach of Dr. Wesselhoeft. It is by my feelings as to thee and Una, more than on my own account, that I find I am a true believer in homeopathy.

Ownest, I love thee. I love little Una dearly too. Tell her so, and show her the place, and give her a kiss for me.

THINE OWNEST HUSBAND.

Mrs. Sophia A. Hawthorne,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Massachusetts.

Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I might have written many pages about it

April 23rd 1860

We have been here several weeks... Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I might have written many pages about it, for it is really a picturesque and interesting city. It is completely sheltered in the lap of hills, the sides of the valley rising steep and high from the level spot on which it stands, and through which runs the muddy little stream of the Avon. The older part of the town is on the level, and the more modern growth the growth of more than a hundred years climbs higher and higher up the hill-side, till the upper streets are very airy and lofty. The houses are built almost entirely of Bath stone, which in time loses its original buff colour, and is darkened by age and coal smoke into a dusky grey; but still the city looks clean and pure as compared with most other English towns. In its architecture, it has somewhat of a Parisian aspect, the houses having roofs rising steep from their high fronts, which are often adorned with pillars, pilasters, and other good devices, so that you see it to be a town built with some general idea of beauty, and not for business. There are Circuses, Crescents, Terraces, Parades, and all such fine names as we have become familiar with at Leamington, and other watering-places. The declivity of most of the streets keeps them remarkably clean, and they are paved in a very comfortable way, with large blocks of stone, so that the middle of the street is generally practicable to walk upon, although the side-walks leave no temptation so to do, being of generous width. In many alleys, and round about the Abbey and other edifices, the pavement is of square flags, like those of Florence, and as smooth as a palace floor. On the whole, I suppose there is no place in England where a retired man, with a moderate in come, could live so tolerably as at Bath; it being almost a city in size and social advantages; quite so, indeed, if eighty thousand people make a city and yet having no annoyance of business nor spirit of worldly struggle. All modes of enjoyment that English people like may be had here ; and even the climate is said to be milder than elsewhere in England. How this may be, I know not; but we have rain or passing showers almost every day since we arrived, and I suspect the surrounding hills are just about of that inconvenient height, that keeps catching clouds, and compelling them to squeeze out their moisture upon the included valley. The air, however, certainly is preferable to that of Leamington.

There are no antiquities except the Abbey, which has not the interest of many other English churches and cathedrals. In the midst of the old part of the town, stands the housewhich was formerlyBeauNash's residence, but wrhich is now part of the establishment of an ale merchant. The edifice is a tall, but rather mean-looking, stone building, with the entrance from a little side-court, which is so cumbered with empty beer barrels as hardly to afford a passage. The doorway has some architectural pretensions, being pillared and with some sculptured devices whether lions or winged heraldic monstrosities I forget, on the pediment. Within, there is a small entry, not large enough to be termed a hall, and a staircase, with carved balustrade, ascending by angular turns and square landing-places. For a long course of years, ending a little more than a century ago, princes, nobles, and all the great and beautiful people of old times, used to go up that staircase, to pay their respects to the King of Bath. On the side of the house, there is a marble slab inserted, recording that here he resided, and that here he died in 1767, between eighty and ninety years of age. My first acquaintance with him was in Smollett's " Roderick Random/' and I have met him in a hundred other novels.

His marble statue is in a niche at one end of the great pump room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for Beau Nash, however; or, if so, it requires colour to set him off adequately.

It is usual in Bath to see the old sign of the checker-board on the doorposts of taverns. It was originally a token that the game might be played there, and is now merely a tavern-sign.

What a pity that such a picture should fade

April 22nd 1858

We have been recently to the studio of Mr. Brown,* the American landscape painter, and were altogether surprised and delighted with his pictures. He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy; he talks ungrammatically, and in Yankee idioms; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque; but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful and true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical the moon shining so brightly, that it seemed to throw a light even beyond the limits of the picture; and yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noon tides too, were no wise inferior to this, although their excellence required somewhat longer study to be fully appreciated. I seemed to receive more pleasure from Mr. Brown's pictures than from any of the landscapes by the old masters; and the fact serves to strengthen me in the belief that the most delicate, if not the highest, charm of a picture is evanescent; and that we continue to admire pictures prescriptively and by tradition, after the qualities that first won them their fame have vanished. I suppose Claude was a greater landscape painter than Brown, but, for my own pleasure, I would prefer one of the latter artist's pictures; those of the former being quite changed from what he intended them to be, by the effect of time on his pigments. Mr. Brown showed us some drawings from nature, done with incredible care and minuteness of detail, as studies for his paintings. We complimented him on his patience, but he said, "Oh, it's not patience it's love!" In fact, it was a patient and most successful wooing of a beloved object, which at last rewarded him by yielding itself wholly.

We have likewise been to Mr. B 's studio, where we saw several pretty statues and busts, and among them an Eve, with her wreath of fig leaves lying across her poor nudity; comely in some points, but with a frightful volume of thighs and calves. I do not altogether see the necessity of ever sculpturing another nakedness. Man is no longer a naked animal; his clothes are as natural to him as his skin, and sculptors have no more right to undress him than to flay him.

Also, we have seen again William Story's " Cleopatra;" a work of genuine thought and energy, representing a terribly dangerous woman quiet enough for the moment, but very likely to spring upon you like a tigress. It is delightful to escape to his creations from this universal prettiness, which seems to be the highest conception of the crowd of modern sculptors, and which they almost invariably attain.

Miss Bremer called on us the other day. We find her very little changed from what she was when she came to take tea and spend an evening at our little red cottage among the Berkshire hills, and went away so dissatisfied with my conversation at performances, and so laudatory of my brow and eyes, while so severely criticising my poor mouth and chin. She is the funniest little old fairy in person whom one can imagine, with a huge nose, to which all the rest of her is but an insufficient appendage; but you feel at once that she is most gentle, kind, womanly, sympathetic, and true. She talks English fluently, in a low quiet voice, but with such an accent that it is impossible to understand her without the closest attention. This was the real cause of the failure of our Berkshire interview ; for I could not guess, half the time, what she was saying, and, of course, had to take an uncertain aim with my responses. A more intrepid talker than myself would have shouted his ideas across the gulf; but, for me, there must first be a close and unembarrassed contiguity with my companion, or I cannot say one real word. I doubt whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen persons in my life, either men or women.

To-day my wife and I have been at the picture and sculpture galleries of the Capitol. I rather enjoyed looking at several of the pictures, though at this moment I particularly remember only a very beautiful face of a man, one of two heads on the same canvas, by Vandyke. Yes; I did look with new admiration at Paul Veronese's " Rape of Europa." It must have been, in its day, the most brilliant and rejoicing picture, the most voluptuous, the most exuberant, that ever put the sunshine to shame. The bull has all Jupiter in him, so tender and gentle, yet so passionate, that you feel it indecorous to look at him; and Europa, under her thick, rich stuffs and embroideries, is all a woman. What a pity that such a picture should fade, and perplex the beholder with such splendour, shining through such forlornness.

We afterwards went into the sculpture gallery, where I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little tail which we infer, have an exquisite effect, and make the spectator smile in his very heart. This race of fauns was the most delightful of all that antiquity imagined. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them having prolonged itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals, but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story. Fancy this combination in the person of a young lady!

I have spoken of Mr. Gibson's coloured statues. It seems (at least Mr. Nichols tells me) that he stains them with tobacco juice Were he to send a Cupid to America, he need not trouble himself to stain it beforehand.

* Now dead

I milked two cows this morning

22 April 1841

What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the world; but, thank God, I am able to do my share of it, and my ability increases daily. What a great, broad-shouldered, elephantine personage I shall become by and by!

*****
I milked two cows this morning, and would send you some of the milk, only that it is mingled with that which was drawn forth by Mr. Dismal View and the rest of the brethren.

one of the most earnest snow-storms of the year

April 20th. [1851]

The children found Houstonias more than a week ago. There have been easterly wind, continual cloudiness, and occasional rain for a week. This morning opened with a great snow storm from the north-east, one of the most earnest snow-storms of the year, though rather more moist than in midwinter. The earth is entirely covered. Now, as the day advances towards noon, it shows some symptoms of turning to rain.

I want thee in my arms.

Baltimore, Wednesday [20 April 1853], 5 o'clock. Thus far in safety. I shall mail the letter immediately on reaching Washington, where we expect to he at 1/2 past 9.

With love a thousand times more than ever,

Thinest,
N. H.

Washington, Thursday. -- Before Breakfast. -- Dearest, I arrived so late and tired, last night, that I quite forgot to mail the letter. I found about a dozen letters awaiting me at the hotel, from other people, but none from thee. My heart is weary with longing for thee. I want thee in my arms.

I shall go to the President at nine o'clock this morning shall spend three or four days here and mean to be back early next week.

THINE OWNEST.

Nothing he won was worth the winning, except as a step gained toward the summit.

April 19th. [1849]

General Pierce leaves Rome this morning for Venice, by way of Ancona, and taking the steamer thence to Trieste. I had hoped to make the journey along with him; but U----'s terrible illness has made it necessary for us to continue here another month, and we are thankful that this seems now to be the extent of our misfortune. Never having had any trouble before that pierced into my very vitals, I did not know what comfort there might be in the manly sympathy of a friend; but Pierce has undergone so great a sorrow of his own, and has so large and kindly a heart, and is so tender and so strong, that he really did me good, and I shall always love him the better for the recollection of his ministrations in these dark days. Thank God, the thing we dreaded did not come to pass.

Pierce is wonderfully little changed. Indeed, now that he has won and enjoyed if there were any enjoyment in it the highest success that public life could give him, he seems more like what he was in his early youth than at any subsequent period. He is evidently happier than I have ever known him since our college days; satisfied with what he has been, and with the position in the country that remains to him, after filling such an office. Amid all his former successes early as they came, and great as they were I always perceived that some thing gnawed within him, and kept him for ever restless and miserable. Nothing he won was worth the winning, except as a step gained toward the summit. I cannot tell how early he began to look towards the Presidency; but I believe he would have died an unhappy man without it. And yet what infinite chances there seemed to be against his attaining it! When I look at it in one way, it strikes me as absolutely miraculous; in another, it came like an event that I had all along expected. It was due to his wonderful tact, which is of so subtle a character that he himself is but partially sensible of it.

I have found in him, here in Rome, the whole of my early friend, and even better than I used to know him; a heart as true and affectionate, a mind much widened and deepened by his experience of life. We hold just the same relation to one another as of yore, and we have passed all the turning-off places, and may hope to go on together still the same dear friends as long as we live. I do not love him one whit the less for having been President, nor for having done me the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks eloquently in his favour, and perhaps says a little for myself. If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps I might not have borne it so well; but each did his best for the other as friend for friend.

Blessed be God for this green tract

April 19th 1840

What a beautiful day was yesterday! My spirit rebelled against being confined in my darksome dungeon at the Custom House. It seemed a sin, a murder of the joyful young day, a quenching of the sunshine. Nevertheless, there I was kept a prisoner till it was too late to fling myself on a gentle wind, and be blown away into the country... When I shall be again free, I will enjoy all things with the fresh simplicity of a child of five years old. I shall grow young again, made all over anew. I will go forth and stand in a summer shower, and all the worldly dust that has collected on me shall be washed away at once, and my heart will be like a bank of fresh flowers for the weary to rest upon...

6 P.M. I went out to walk about an hour ago, and found it very pleasant, though there was a some what cool wind. I went round and across the Common, and stood on the highest point of it, where I could see miles and miles into the country. Blessed be God for this green tract, and the view which it affords, whereby we poor citizens may be put in mind, sometimes, that all his earth is not composed of blocks of brick houses, and of stone or wooden pavements. Blessed be God for the sky too, though the smoke of the city may somewhat change its aspect, but still it is better than if each street were covered over with a roof. There were a good many people walking on the mall, mechanics apparently, and shopkeepers clerks, with their wives; and boys were rolling on the grass, and I would have liked to lie down and roll too.

I shall mail this scribble

Philadelphia, Tuesday 19th, 1853

Ownest,

We left New York yesterday at 3 o'clock, and arrived safely here, where we have spent the day. We leave tor Washington tomorrow morning and I shall mail this scribble there, so that thou wilt know that I have arrived in good condition. Thou canst not imagine the difficulty of finding time and place to write a word. I enjoy the journey and seeing new places, but need thee be yond all possibility of telling. I feel as if I had just begun to know that there is nothing else for me but thou. The children, too, I know how to love, at last. Kiss them all for me. In greatest haste (and in a public room),

Thine ownest,
N. H.

You are beautiful, my own heart's Dove.

Friday, April 19th. [1839]

Your Wednesday's letter has come, dearest. Your letters delight me more than anything, save the sound of your voice; and I love dearly to write to you so be at peace on that score. You are beautiful, my own heart's Dove. Never doubt it again. I shall really and truly he very glad of the extracts; and they will have a charm for me that could not otherwise have been. I will imagine your voice repeating them, tremulously. The spell which you laid upon my brow will retain its power till we meet again -- then it must be renewed.

What a beautiful day and I had a double enjoyment of it, for your sake and my own. I have been to walk this afternoon, to Bunker's Hill and the Navy Yard, and am tired, because I had not your arm to support me.

God keep you from East winds and every other evil.

Mine own Dove's own Friend,

N. H.

1/2 past 5 P. M.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Salem, Mass.

I am sure my loving and beloved West Wind will kiss me for it.

[continued from the previous day]

April 18th.

My Dove my hopes of a long evening of seclusion were not quite fulfilled; for a little before nine o'clock John Forrester and Cousin Haley came in, both of whom I so fascinated with my delectable conversation, that they did not take leave till after eleven. Nevertheless, I had already secured no inconsiderable treasure of enjoyment, with all of which you were intermingled. There has been nothing to do at the Custom House today; so I came home at two o'clock, and went to sleep! Pray Heaven you may have felt a sympathetic drowsiness, and have yielded to it. My nap has been a pretty long one, for as nearly as I can judge by the position of the sun, it must be as much as five o'clock. I think there will be a beautiful sunset; and perhaps, if we could walk out together, the wind, would change and the air grow balmy at once. The Spring is not acquainted with my Dove and me, as the Winter was; how then can we expect her to be kindly to us? We really must continue to walk out and meet her, and make friends with her; then she will salute your cheek with her balmiest kiss, whenever she gets a chance. As to the east wind, if ever the imaginative portion of my brain recover from its torpor, I mean to personify it as a wicked, spiteful, blustering, treacherous in short, altogether devilish sort of  body, whose principle of life it is to make as much mischief as he can. The west wind or whatever is the gentlest wind of heaven shall assume your aspect, and be humanised and angelicised with your traits of character, and the sweet West shall finally triumph over the fiendlike East, and rescue the world from his miserable tyranny; and it I tell the story well, I am sure my loving and beloved West Wind will kiss me for it.

When this week's first letter came, I held it a long time in my hand, marvelling at the super scription. How did you contrive to write it? Several times since, I have pored over it, to discover how much of yourself was mingled with my share of it; and certainly there is a grace flung over the facsimile, which was never seen in my harsh, uncouth autograph and yet none of the strength is lost. You are wonderful. Imitate this.

NATH. HAWTHORN.

one does not enjoy these freaks in marble.

April 18th. [1858]

Yesterday, at noon, the whole family of us set out on a visit to the Villa Borghese and its grounds, the entrance to which is just outside of the Porta del Popolo. After getting within the grounds, however, there is a long walk before reaching the Casino, and we found the sun rather uncomfortably hot, and the road dusty and white in the sunshine; nevertheless, a footpath ran alongside of it most of the way through the grass and among the young trees. It seems to me that the trees do not put forth their leaves with nearly the same magical rapidity in this southern land at the approach of summer as they do in more northerly countries. In these latter, having a much shorter time to develop themselves, they feel the necessity of making the most of it. But the grass, in the lawns and enclosures along which we passed, looked already fit to be mowed, and it was interspersed with many flowers.

Saturday being, I believe, the only day of the week on which visitors are admitted to the Casino, there were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentle men on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. The whole of the basement-floor of the Casino, comprising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance-hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, -- curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxi teles, and another, who seems to be dancing, were exceedingly pleasant to look at. I like these strange, sweet, playful, rustic creatures, . . . linked so prettily, without monstrosity, to the lower tribes . . . Their character has never, that I know of, been wrought out in literature; and something quite good, funny, and philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be educed from them . . . The faun is a natural and delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with something of a divine character intermingled.

The gallery, as it is called, on the basement floor of the Casino, is sixty feet in length, by perhaps a third as much in breadth, and is (after all I have seen at the Colonna Palace and elsewhere) a more magnificent hall than I imagined to be in existence. It is floored with rich marbles, in beautifully-arranged compartments, and the walls are almost entirely, cased with marble of various sorts, the prevailing kind being giallo antico, intermixed with verde antique, and I know not what else; but the splendour of the giallo antico gives the character to the room, and the large and deep niches along the walls appear to be lined with the same material. Without coming to Italy, one can have no idea of what beauty and magnificence are produced by these fittings up of polished marble. Marble to an American means nothing but white limestone.

This hall, moreover, is adorned with pillars of oriental alabaster, and wherever is a space vacant of precious and richly-coloured marble it is frescoed with arabesque ornaments; and over the whole is a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There never can be anything richer than the whole effect. As to the sculpture here, it was not very fine, so far as I can remember, consisting chiefly of busts of the emperors in porphyry; but they served a good purpose in the upholstery way. There were also magnificent tables, each composed of one great slab of porphyry; and also vases of nero antico, and other rarest substance. It remains to be mentioned that, on this almost summer-day, I was quite chilled in passing through these glorious halls; no fire-place anywhere; no possibility of comfort; and in the hot season, when their coolness might be agreeable, it would be death to inhabit them.

Ascending a long winding staircase we arrived at another suite of rooms, containing a good many not very remarkable pictures, and a few more pieces of statuary. Among the latter is Canova's statue of Pauline, the sister of Bonaparte, who is represented with but little drapery, and in the character of Venus, holding the apple in her hand. It is admirably done, and, I have no doubt, a perfect likeness; very beautiful too; but it is wonderful to see how the artificial elegance of the woman of this world makes itself perceptible in spite of whatever simplicity she could find in almost utter nakedness. The statue does not afford pleasure in the contemplation.

In one of these upper rooms are some works of Bernini: two of them -- Æneas and Anchises, and David on the point of slinging a stone at Goliah -- have great merit, and do not tear and rend themselves quite out of the laws and limits of marble, like his later sculpture. Here is also his Apollo over taking Daphne, whose feet take root, whose finger tips sprout into twigs, and whose tender body roughens round about with bark as he embraces her. It did not seem very wonderful to me; not so good as Milliard's description of it made me expect; and one does not enjoy these freaks in marble.

We were glad to emerge from the Casino into the warm sunshine; and, for my part, I made the best of my way to a large fountain, surrounded by a circular stone seat, of wide sweep, and sat down in a sunny segment of the circle. Around grew a solemn company of old trees, ilexes, I believe, with huge, contorted trunks and evergreen branches, . . . deep groves, sunny openings, the airy gush of fountains, marble statues, dimly visible in recesses of foliage, great urns and vases, terminal figures, temples all these works of art looking as if they had stood there long enough to feel at home, and to be on friendly and familiar terms with the grass and trees. It is a most beautiful place, . . . and the Malaria is its true master and inhabitant!

I can see visions more vividly

To Sophie Peabody
Wednesday, April 17th, 1839 4 o'clock P. M.

My Dearest:

If it were not for your sake, I should really be glad of this pitiless east wind, and should especially bless the pelting rain and intermingled snowflakes. They have released me from the toils and cares of office, and given me license to betake myself to my own chamber; and here I sit by a good coal fire, with at least six or seven comfortable hours to spend before bed-time. I feel pretty secure against intruders; for the bad weather will defend me from foreign invasion; and as to Cousin Haley, he and I had a bitter political dispute last evening, at the close of which he went to bed in high dudgeon, and probably will not speak to me these three days. Thus you perceive that strife and wrangling, as well as east winds and rain, are the methods of a kind Providence to promote my comfort which would not have been so well secured in any other way. Six or seven hours of cheerful solitude! But I will not be alone. I invite your spirit to be with me at any hour and as many hours as you please but especially at the twilight hour, before I light my lamp. Are you conscious of my invitation? I bid you at that particular time, because I can see visions more vividly in the dusky glow of fire light, than either by daylight or lamplight. Come and let me renew my spell against headache and other direful effects of the east wind. How I wish I could give you a portion of my insensibility! And yet I should be almost afraid of some radical transformation, were I to produce a change in that respect. God made you so delicately, that it is especially unsafe to interfere with His workmanship. If my little Sophie mine own Dove cannot grow plump and rosy and tough and vigorous without being changed into another nature then I do think that for this short life, she had better remain just what she is. Yes; but you will always be the same to me, because we have met in Eternity, and there our intimacy was formed. So get as well as you possibly can, and be as strong and rosy as you will; for I shall never doubt that you are the same Sophie who have so often leaned upon my arm, and needed its superfluous strength.

I was conscious, on those two evenings, of a peacefulness and contented repose such as I never enjoyed before. You could not have felt such (quiet unless I had felt it too nor could I, unless you had. If either of our spirits had been troubled, they were then in such close communion that both must have felt the same grief and turmoil. I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me; and whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance, but peace overflows from your heart into mine. Then I feel that there is a Now and that Now must be always calm and happy and that sorrow and evil are but phantoms that seem to flit across it.

You must never expect to see my sister E. in the daytime, unless by previous appointment, or when she goes to walk. So unaccustomed am I to daylight interviews, that I never imagine her in sunshine; and I really doubt whether her faculties of life and intellect begin to be exercised till dusk unless on extraordinary occasions. Their noon is at midnight: I wish you could walk with her; but you must not, because she is indefatigable, and always wants to walk half round the world, when once she is out of doors. [continued the next day]

I am homesick for thee.

New York, Sunday morng., April 17th, 1853

Dearest,

I arrived here in good condition Thursday night at 1/2 past 12. Even moment of my time has been so taken up with calls and engagements that I really could not put pen to paper until now, when I am writing before going down to breakfast.

It is almost as difficult to see O'Sullivan here as if he were a hundred miles off. I rode three miles to his home on Friday, and found him not at home. However, he came yesterday, and we talked together until other people came between.

I do wish I could be let alone, to follow my own ideas of what is agreeable. To-day, I am to dine with a college-professor of mathematics, to meet Miss Lynch!! Why did I ever leave thee, my own dearest wife? Now, thou seest, I am to be lynched.

We have an ugly storm here to-day. I intend to leave New York for Philadelphia tomorrow, and shall probably reach Washington on Wednesday.

I am homesick for thee. The children, too, seem very good and beautiful. I hope Una will be very kind and sweet. As for Julian, let Ellen make him a pandowdy. Does Rosebud still remember me? It seems an age since I left home.

No words can tell how I love thee. I will write again as soon as possible.

THINK OWNEST HUSBAND.

They are the Unpardonable Sin and the Intolerable Punishment

14 Mull street, Monday, [Salem, 16th April, 1849]

Ownest wife,

I suppose thou wilt not expect (nor wish for) a letter from me; hut it is so desolate and lonesome here that I needs must write. This is a miserable time. Thy and the children's absence; and this dreary bluster of the wind, which at once exasperates and depresses me to the very last degree; and finally, a breakfast (the repetition of yesterday's) of pease and Indian pudding!! It is a strange miscellany of grievances; but it does my business it makes me curse my day. This matter of the breakfast is the most intolerable, just at this moment; because the taste of it is still in my mouth, and the nausea and disgust over whelms me like the consciousness of sin. Hell is nothing else but eating pease and baked Indian pudding! If thou lovest me, never let me see either of them again. Keep such things for thy and my worst enemies. Give thy husband bread, or cold potatoes; and he never will complain but pease and Indian pudding! God forgive me for ever having burthened my conscience with such abominations. They are the Unpardonable Sin and the Intolerable Punishment, in one and the same accursed spoonfull!

I think I hardly ever had such a dismal time as yesterday. I cannot bear the loneliness of the house. I need the sunshine of the children; even their little quarrels and naughtinesses would be a blessing to me. I need thee, above all, and find myself, at every absence, so much the less able to endure it. Come home come home!

Where dost thou think I was on Saturday afternoon? Thou wilt never guess.

In haste; for it is almost Custom House time.

THY HUSBAND.

Mrs. Sophia A. Hawthorne,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
13 West Street,
Boston, Mass.

four gentlemen in sables

Oak Hill, April 16th, 1/2 past 6 A.M. [1841]

Most beloved, I have a few moments to spare before breakfast: and perhaps thou wilt let me
spend them in talking to thee. Thy two letters blessed me yesterday, having been brought by some private messenger of Mrs. Ripley's. Very joyful was I to hear from my Dove, and my heart gave a mighty heave and swell. That cough of thine I do wish it would take its departure, for I cannot bear to think of thy tender little frame being shaken with it all night long.

Since I last wrote, there has been an addition to our community of four gentlemen in sables, who promise to be among our most useful and respectable members. They arrived yesterday, about noon. Mr. Ripley had proposed to them to join us, no longer ago than that very morning. I had some conversation with them in the afternoon, and was glad to hear them express much satisfaction with their new abode and all the arrangements. They do not appear to be very communicative, however, or perhaps it may be merely an external reserve, like my own, to shield their delicacy. Several of their prominent characteristics, as well as their black attire, lead me to believe that they are members of the clerical profession; but I have not yet ascertained from their own lips what has been the nature of their past lives. I trust to have much pleasure in their society, and, sooner or later, that we shall all of us derive great strength from our intercourse with them. I cannot too highly applaud the readiness with which these four gentlemen in black have thrown aside all the fopperies and flummeries which have their origin in a false state of society. When I last saw them, they looked as heroically regardless of the stains and soils incident to our profession as I did when I emerged from the gold mine...

I have milked a cow !!!... The herd has rebelled against the usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer; and, whenever they are turned out of the barn, she is compelled to take refuge under our protection. So much did she impede my labours by keeping close to me, that I found it necessary to give her two or three gentle pats with a shovel ; but still she preferred to trust herself to my tender mercies, rather than venture among the horns of the herd. She is not an amiable cow ; but she has a very intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of character. I doubt not that she will soon perceive the expediency of being on good terms with the rest of the sisterhood. I have not yet been twenty yards from our house and barn; but I begin to perceive that this is a beautiful place. The scenery is of a mild and placid character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more the longer we live here. There is a brook, so near the house that we shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings, but, for agricultural purposes, it has been made to flow in a straight and rectangular fashion, which does it infinite damage as a picturesque object...

Naughtiest, it was a moment or two before I could think whom you meant by Mr. Dismal View. Why, he is one of the best of the brotherhood, so far as cheerfulness goes; for if he do not laugh himself, he makes the rest of us laugh continually. He is the quaintest and queerest personage you ever saw, full of dry jokes, the humour of which is so incorporated with the strange twistifications of his physiognomy, that his sayings ought to be written down, accompanied with illustrations by Cruickshank. Then he keeps quoting innumerable scraps of Latin, and makes classical allusions, while we are turning over the gold mine; and the contrast between the nature of his employment and the character of his thoughts is irresistibly ludicrous.

I have written this epistle in the parlour, while Farmer Ripley, and Farmer Farley, and Farmer Dismal View were talking about their agricultural concerns. So you will not wonder if it is not a classical piece of composition, either in point of thought or expression. I shall have just time before breakfast is ready the boy has just come to call us now but still I will tell thee that I love thee infinitely; and that I long for thee unspeakably, but yet with a happy longing. The rest of them have gone into the breakfast room; ...

[Portion of letter missing]

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
13 West street,
Boston.

Calypso and her nymphs, a knot of nude women by Titian

April 16th. [1858]

We went this morning to the Academy of St. Luke (the Fine Arts Academy at Rome), in the Via Bonella, close by the Forum. We rang the bell at the house-door ; and after a few moments it was unlocked or unbolted by some unseen agency from above, no one making his appearance to admit us. We ascended two or three flights of stairs, and entered a hall, where wras a young man, the custode, and two or three artists engaged in copying some of the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn to wards Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste than mine to appreciate him; and yet I do appreciate him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is perfectly beautiful . . . In the gallery, there are whole rows of portraits of members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very common place people a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not think them noticeably indecorous, as compared with a hundred other pictures that are shown and looked at without scruple, Calypso and her nymphs, a knot of nude women by Titian, is perhaps as objectionable as any.

But even Titian's flesh tints cannot keep, and have not kept their warmth through all these centuries. The illusion and life-likeness effervesces and exhales. out of a picture as it grows old; and we go on talking of a charm that has for ever vanished.

From St. Luke's we went to San Pietro in Vinioli occupying a fine position on or near the summit of the Esquiline mount. A little abortion of a man (and, by-the-bye, there are more diminutive and illshapen men and women in Rome than I ever saw elsewhere a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in swaddling clothes) -- this two-foot abortion hast ened before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan to open the church door. It was a needless service, for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San Pietro is a simple and noble church, consisting of a nave divided from the side aisles by rows of columns, that once adorned some ancient temple; and its wide, unincumbered interior affords better breathing space than most churches in Rome. The statue of Moses occupies a niche in one of the side aisles on the right, not far from the high altar. I found it grand and sublime, with a beard flowing down like a cataract; a truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it were desirable that such strength should be. The horns, about which so much has been said, are not a very prominent feature of the statue, being merely two diminutive tips rising straight up over his forehead, neither adding to the grandeur of the head, nor detracting sensibly from it. The whole force of this statue is not to be felt in one brief visit, but I agree with an English gentle man who, with a large party, entered the church while we were there, in thinking that Moses has "very fine features" a compliment for which the colossal Hebrew ought to have made the Englishman a bow.

Besides the Moses, the church contains some attractions of a pictorial kind, which are reposited in the sacristy, into which we passed through a side door. The most remarkable of these pictures is a face and bust of Hope, by Guido, with beautiful eyes lifted upwards; it has a grace which artists are continually trying to get into their innumerable copies, but always without success; for, indeed, though nothing is more true than the existence of this charm in the picture, yet if you try to analyse it, or even look too intently at it, it vanishes, till you look again with more trusting simplicity.

Leaving the church, we wandered to the Coliseum, and to the public grounds contiguous to them, where a score and more of French drummers were beating each man his drum, without reference to any rub-adub but his own. This seems to be a daily or periodical practice and point of duty with them. After resting ourselves on one of the marble benches, we came slowly home, through the basilica of Constantine, and along the shady sides of the streets and piazzas, sometimes perforce striking boldly through the white sunshine, which, however, was not so hot as to shrivel us up bodily. It has been a most beautiful and perfect day as regards weather -- clear and bright, very warm in the sunshine, yet freshened throughout by a quiet stir in the air. Still there is something in this air malevolent, or, at least, not friendly. The Romans lie down and fall asleep in it -- in any vacant part of the streets, and wherever they can find any spot sufficiently clean, and among the ruins of temples. I would not sleep in the open air for whatever my life may be worth.

On our way home, sitting in one of the narrow streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff -- a far more ancient implement than the spinningwheel, which the housewives of other nations have long since laid aside.

employment that suits the indolence of a modern Roman

April 15th. [1858]

Yesterday I went with J---- to the Forum, and descended into the excavations at the base of the Capitol, and on the site of the basilica of Julia. The essential elements of old Rome are there: columns, single or in groups of two or three, still erect, but battered and bruised at some forgotten time with infinite pains and labour; fragments of other columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals and friezes; the bust of a colossal female statue, showing the bosom and upper part of the arms, but headless; a long, winding space of pavement, forming part of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and solid as ever; the foundation of the Capitol itself, wonder fully massive, built of immense square blocks of stone, doubtless three thousand years old, and durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the world; the arch of Septimius Severus, with bas-reliefs of Eastern wars; the column of Phocas, with the rude series of steps ascending on four sides to its pedestal; the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the basilica of Julia, the slabs cracked across, -- the greater part of them torn up and removed, the grass and weeds growing up through the chinks of what remain; heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other ancient rubbish, among which old men are lazily rummaging for specimens that a stranger may be induced to buy, this being an employment that suits the indolence of a modern Roman. The level of these excavations is about fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street which passes through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of time, and in view of them we forgot all that has intervened be twixt them and us, being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to the Roman ages, and do not realise how wide the gulf is. Yet in that intervening valley lie Christianity, the dark ages, the feudal system, chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome brought to the verge of the gulf.

To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we saw some fine pictures, but, I think, no masterpieces. They did not depress and dishearten me so much as the pictures in Roman palaces usually do; for they were in remarkably good order as regards frames and varnish; indeed, I rather suspect some of them had been injured by the means adopted to preserve their beauty. The palace is now occupied by the French Ambassador, who probably looks upon the pictures as articles of furniture and household adornment, and does not choose to have squares of black and forlorn canvas upon his walls. There were a few noble portraits by Vandyke, a very striking one by Holbein, one or two by Titian, also by Guercino, and some pictures by Rubens, and other forestieri painters, which refreshed my weary eyes. But what chiefly interested me was the magnificent and stately hall of the palace, fifty-five of my paces in length, be sides a large apartment at either end, opening into it through a pillared space as wide as the gateway of a city. The pillars are of giallo antico, and there are pilasters of the same all the way up and down the walls, forming a perspective of the richest aspect, especially as the broad cornice flames with gilding, and the spaces between the pilasters are emblazoned with heraldic achievements and emblems in gold, and there are Venetian looking-glasses, richly decorated over the surface with beautiful pictures of flowers and Cupids, through which you catch the gleam of the mirror; and two rows of splendid chandeliers extend from end to end of the hall, which, when lighted up, if ever it be lighted up, nowanights, must be the most brilliant interior that ever mortal eye beheld. The ceiling glows with pictures in fresco, representing scenes connected with the his tory of the Colonna family; and the floor is paved with beautiful marbles, polished and arranged in square and circular compartments; and each of the many windows is set in a great architectural frame of precious marble, as large as the portal of a door. The apartment at the farther end of the hall is elevated above it, and is attained by several marble steps, whence it must have been glorious in former days to have looked down upon a gorgeous throng of princes, cardinals, warriors, and ladies, in such rich attire as might be worn when the palace was built. It is singular how much freshness and brightness it still retains; and the only objects to mar the effect were some ancient statues and busts, not very good in themselves, and now made dreary of aspect by their corroded surfaces, -- the result of long burial under ground.

In the room at the entrance of the hall are two cabinets, each a wonder in its way: one being adorned with precious stones; the other with ivory carvings of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and of the frescoes of Raphael's Loggie. The world has ceased to be so magnificent as it once was. Men make no such marvels nowadays. The only defect that I remember in this hall, was in the marble steps that ascend to the elevated apartment at the end of it; a large piece had been broken out of one of them, leaving a rough, irregular gap in the polished marble stair. It is not easy to conceive what violence can have done this, without also doing mischief to all the other splendour around it.