Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course of the day, events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck, the dead have been buried.

Curious to imagine, what murmurings and discontent would be excited if any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be abolished, as, for instance, death.

Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.

A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his chamber.

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his chamber.

Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow for, and vice versa? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning at weddings? For their friends to console with them when they attained riches and honour, as only so much care added?

If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other token of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it remain till a death occurred elsewhere, and then to hang that same garland over the other house, it would have, methinks, a strong effect.

No fountain so small but that heaven may be imaged in its bosom.

Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them all through one darksome portal, all his children.

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

A new classification of society to be instituted. Instead of rich and poor, high and low, they are to be classed, First, by their sorrows: for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel, who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black, whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class. Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honoured among men, they also form a class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together, as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease; and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them all through one darksome portal, all his children.

There is a superfluity of newspaper puffs here

Salem, Jany. 27th, 1841 1/2 past 2 P.M.

Very dearest, what a dismal sky is this that hangs over us! Thy husband doth but half live to-day his soul lies asleep, or rather torpid. As for thee, thou hast been prating at a great rate, and has spoken many wonderful truths in to-day's conversation.

Belovedest, thou wast very sweet and lovely in our walk yesterday morning; and it gladdens me much that Providence brought us together. Dost thou not think that there is always some espeeial blessing granted us, when we are to be divided for any length of time? Thou rememberest what a blissful evening came down from Heaven to us, betore our last separation; insomuch that our hearts glowed with its influence, all through the ensuing week. And yesterday there came a heavenly morning, and thou earnest with it like a rosy vision, which still lingers with me, and will not quite fade away, till it be time for it to brighten into reality. Surely, thou art beloved of Heaven, and all these blessings are vouchsafed tor thy sake; for I do not remember that such things used to happen to me, while 1 was a solitary sinner. Thou bringest a rich portion to thy husband, dearest even the blessing of thy Heavenly Father.

Whenever I return to Salem, I feel how dark my life would be. without the light that thou shedst upon it how cold, without the warmth of thy love. Sitting in this chamber, where my youth wasted itself in vain, I can partly estimate the change that has been wrought. It seems as if the better part of me had been born, since then. I had walked those many years in darkness, and might so have walked through life, with only a dreamy notion that there was any light in the universe, it thou hadst not kissed mine eye-lids, and given me to see. Thou, belovedest, hast always been positively happy. Not so thy husband he has only been not miserable. Then which of us has gained the most? Thy husband, assuredly.

When a beam of heavenly sunshine incorporates itself with a dark cloud, is not the cloud benefitted more than the sunshine? What a happy image is this! -- my soul is the cloud, and thine the sunshine -- but a gentler, softer sunshine than ever melted into any other cloud.

Dearest wife, nothing at all has happened to me, since I left thee. It puzzles me to conceive how thou meetest with so many more events than thy husband. Thou wilt have a volume to tell me, when we meet, and wilt pour thy beloved voice into mine ears, in a stream of two hours long. At length thou wilt pause, and say -- "But what has thy life been?" -- and then will thy stupid husband look back upon what he calls his life, tor three or tour days past, and behold a blank! Thou livest ten times as much [as] he; because thy spirit takes so much more note of things.

I met our friend Mr. Howes in the street, yesterday, and held a brief confabulation. He did not inquire how my wife's health is. Was not this a sin against etiquette? Dearest, thy husband's stupid book seems to meet more approbation here, than the former volume did -- though that was greeted more favorably than it deserved. There is a superfluity of newspaper puffs here, and a deficiency in Boston, where they are much needed. I ought to love Salem better than I do; for the people have always had a pretty generous faith in me, ever since they knew me at all. I fear I must be undeserving of their praise, else I should never get it. . . What an ungrateful blockhead thy husband is!

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Mass.

gazing, and gazing, and gazing

Boston, Jany. 24th, 1840 4 P.M.

Ownest Dove,

Your letter came this forenoon, announcing the advent of the pictures; so I came home as soon as I possibly could and there was the package! I naturally trembled as I undid it, so eager was I to behold them. Dearissima, there never was anything so lovely and precious in this world. They are perfect. So soon as the dust and smoke of my fire had evaporated, I put them on the mantel piece, and sat a long time before them with clasped hands, gazing, and gazing, and gazing, and painting a fac-simile of them in my heart, in whose most sacred chamber they shall keep a place forever and ever. Belovedest, I was not long in finding out the Dove in the Menaggio. In fact, she was the very first object that my eyes rested on, when I uncovered the picture. She flew straight way into my heart and yet she remains just where you placed her. Dearest, if it had not been for your strict injunctions that nobody nor anything should touch the pictures, I do believe that my lips would have touched that naughty Sophie Hawthorne, as she stands on the bridge. Do you think the perverse little damsel would have vanished beneath my kiss? What a misfortune would that have been to her poor lover! to find that he kissed away his mistress. But, at worst, she would have remained on my lips. However, 1 shall retrain from all endearments, till you tell me that a kiss may be hazarded without fear of her taking it in ill part and absenting herself without leave.

Mine ownest, it is a very noble-looking cavalier with whom Sophie is standing on the bridge. Are you quite sure that her own husband is the companion of her walk? Yet I need not ask for there is the Dove to bear witness to his identity. That true and tender bird would never have alighted on another hand never have rested so near another bosom. Yes; it must be my very self; and from henceforth it shall be held for an absolute and indisputable truth. It is not my picture, but the very I; and as my inner self belongs to you, there is no doubt that you have caused my soul to pervade the figure. There we are, unchangeable. Years cannot alter us, nor our relation to each other.

Ownest, we will talk about these pictures all our lives and longer; so there is no need that I should say all that I think and feel about them now; especially as I have yet only begun to understand and feel them. I have put them into my bed-room for the present, being afraid to trust them on the mantel-piece; but I cannot help going to feast my eyes upon them, every little while. I have determined not to hang them up till after I have been to Salem, for fear of the dust and of the fingers of the chamber-maid and other visitants. Whenever I am away, they will be safely locked up, either in the bureau or in my closet. I shall want your express directions as to the height at which they ought to be hung, and the width of the space between them, and other minutest particulars. We will discuss these matters, when I come home to my wife.

Belovedest, there are several obstacles to my coming home immediately. At present, two of the Measurers are employed, and another is detained at his home in Chelsea by the sickness of his family, and Colonel Hall continues too unwellto be at the Custom-House; so that I am the only one in attendance there; and moreover I have a coal vessel to discharge to-morrow. But this state of affairs will not continue long. I think I can not fail to be at liberty by Tuesday or Wednesday at furthest; and at all events, next week shall not pass without our meeting; even if I should have barely time to press you in my arms, and say good bye. But the probability is, that I shall come to spend a week.

Dearissima, be patient Sophie Hawthorne as well as the Dove.

My carefullest little wife, I am of opinion that Elizabeth has been misinformed as to the increased prevalence of the small-pox. It could not he so generally caused among the merchants and business-people without my being aware of it; nor do I hear of its committing such fearful ravages anywhere. The folks at the Custom-House know of no such matter; nor does George Hillard. In truth, I had supposed (till I heard otherwise from you) that all cause for alarm was past. Trust me, dearest, there is no need of heart-quake on my account. You have been in greater danger than your husband.

God be with you, blessedest and blessingest. I did. . .

(Remainder of letter missing)

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Salem, Mass.

And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome!

37, PALAZZO LARAZANI, VIA PORTA PINCIANA, January 24th. [1858]

We left Marseilles in the Neapolitan steamer Calabrese, as noticed above, a week ago this morning. There was no fault to be found with the steamer, which was very clean and comfortable, contrary to what we had understood beforehand, except for the coolness of the air (and I know not that this was greater than that of the Atlantic in July), our voyage would have been very pleasant; but for myself, I enjoyed nothing, having a cold upon me, or a low fever, or something else that took the light and warmth out of everything.

I went to bed immediately after my last record, and was rocked to sleep pleasantly enough by the billows of the Mediterranean; and, coming on deck about sunrise next morning, found the steamer approaching Genoa. We saw the city, lying at the foot of a range of hills, and stretching a little way up their slopes, the hills sweeping round it in the segment of a circle, and looking like an island rising abruptly out of the sea; for no connection with the mainland was visible on either side. There was snow scattered on their summits and streaking their sides a good way down. They looked bold, and barren, and brown, except where the snow whitened them. The city did not impress me with much expectation of size or splendour. Shortly after coming into the port our whole party landed, and we found ourselves at once in the midst of a crowd of cab-drivers, hotel-runners, and commissionnaires, who assaulted us with a volley of French, Italian, and broken English, which beat pitilessly about our ears; for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the world had been torn to pieces, and blown around us by a hurricane. Such a pother! We took a commissionnaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who said his name was Salvator Rosa; and he engaged to show us whatever was interesting in Genoa.

In the first place, he took us through narrow streets to an old church, the name of which I have forgotten and, indeed, its peculiar features; but I know that I found it pre-eminently magnificent; its whole interior being encased in polished marble, of various kinds and colours, its ceiling painted, and its chapels adorned with pictures. However, this church was dazzled out of sight by the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb marble frames, within the arches of the chapels. I used to try to imagine how the English cathedrals must have looked in their primeval glory, before the Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's time had overlaid their marble pillars; but I never imagined anything at all approaching what my eyes now beheld: this sheen of polished and variegated marble covering every inch of its walls; this glow of brilliant frescoes all over the roof, and up within the domes; these beautiful pictures by great masters, painted for the places which they now occupied, and making an actual portion of the edifice; this wealth of silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of the saints, before which wax candles burned, and were kept burning, I suppose, from year's end to year's end; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering a hundredth part of the rich details. And even the cathedral (though I give it up as indescribable) was nothing at all in comparison with a church to which the commissionnaire afterwards led us; a church that had been built four or five hundred years ago by a pirate, in expiation of his sins, and out of the profit of his rapine. This last edifice, in its interior, absolutely shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures; its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid inside with precious stones, so that there shall not a hair's-breadth be left un-precious-stoned, and then to conceive this little bit of a casket increased to the magnitude of a great church, without losing anything of the excessive glory that was compressed into its original small compass; but all its pretty lustre made sublime by the consequent immensity. At any rate, nobody who has not seen a church like this can imagine what a gorgeous religion it was that reared it.

In the cathedral, and in all the churches, we saw priests, and many persons, kneeling at their devotions; and our Salvator Rosa, whenever we passed a chapel or shrine, failed not to touch the pavement with one knee, crossing himself the while; and once, when a priest was going through some form of devotion, he stopped a few moments to share in it.

He conducted us, too, to the Balbi Palace, the stateliest and most sumptuous residence, but not more so than another which he afterwards showed us, nor perhaps than many others which exist in Genoa, THE SUPERB. The painted ceilings in these palaces are a glorious adornment the walls of the saloons, encrusted with various-coloured marbles, give an idea of splendour which I never gained from anything else. The floors, laid in mosaic, seem too precious to tread upon. In the royal palace, many of the floors were of various woods, inlaid by an English artist, and they looked like a magnification of some exquisite piece of Tunbridge ware; but, in all respects, this palace was inferior to others which we saw. I say nothing of the immense pictorial treasures which hung upon the walls of all the rooms through which we passed; for I soon grew so weary of admirable things, that I could neither enjoy nor understand them. My receptive faculty is very limited, and when the utmost of its small capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, and the more so the better worth seeing are the things I am forced to reject. I do not know a greater misery: to see sights, after such repletion, is to the mind what it would be to the body to have dainties forced down the throat, long after the appetite were satiated.

All this while, whenever we emerged into the vault-like streets, we were wretchedly cold. The commissionnaire took us to a sort of pleasure-garden, occupying the ascent of a hill, and presenting seven different views of the city, from as many stations. One of the objects pointed out to us was a large yellow house, on a hill-side, in the outskirts of Genoa, which was formerly inhabited for six months by Charles Dickens. Looking down from the elevated part of the pleasure-gardens, we saw orange trees beneath us, with the golden fruit hanging upon them, though their trunks were muffled in straw; and, still lower down, there was ice and snow.

Gladly (so far as I myself was concerned) we dismissed the commissionnaire, after he had brought us to the hotel of the Cross of Malta, where we dined; needlessly, as it proved, for another dinner awaited us, after our return on board the boat.

We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over surrounding graves.

We went into a Jewish Synagogue, the interior cased in marbles, and surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church; but it was dirty, and had an odour not of sanctity.

In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home.

We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a grey beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold much conversation.

The evening was beautiful, with a bright young moonlight, not yet sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the stars, and as we walked the deck, Miss M---- showed the children the constellations, and told their names. J---- made a slight mistake as to one of them, pointing it out to me as " O'Brien's belt!"

Elba was presently in view, and we might have seen many other interesting points, had it not been for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning we found ourselves in the harbour of Civita Vecchia, and, going ashore with our luggage, went through a blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife and I strayed a little through Civita Vecchia, and found its streets narrow, like clefts in a rock. (which seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to send us to Rome in a carriage, with four horses, in eight hours; and as soon as the custom house and passport people would let us, we started, lumbering slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had heard rumours of robberies lately committed on this route; especially of a Nova Scotia bishop, who was detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly pillaged; and certainly there was not a single mile of the dreary and desolate country over which we passed, where we might not have been robbed and murdered with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, or a barn, but did not look very much like either, being strongly built of stone, with iron-grated windows, and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by the sea-shore a great part of the way, and stopped to feed our horses at a village, the wretched street of which stands close along the shore of the Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity. The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he musthave known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered onward through cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth reach ing Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where we could gain admittance, and where we have been half-frozen, and have continued so ever since.

And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome!

Italian Note-Books.

A phantom of the old royal governors, or some such shadowy pageant, on the night of the evacuation of Boston by the British.

(These passages were written in Hawthorne's American Note-Books in 1840, but no specific date is given.)

The love of posterity is a consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living for ever here, he would not care about his offspring.

The device of a sun-dial for a monument over a grave, with some suitable motto.

A man with the right perception of things,-- feeling within him of what is true and what is false. It might be symbolized by the talisman with which, in fairy tales, an adventurer was enabled to distinguish enchantments from realities.

A phantom of the old royal governors, or some such shadowy pageant, on the night of the evacuation of Boston by the British.

---- taking my likeness, I said that such changes would come over my face that she would not know me when we met again in heaven. "See if I do not!" said she, smiling. There was the most peculiar and beautiful humour in the point itself, and in her manner, that can be imagined.

Little F. H - used to look into E's mouth to see where her smiles came from.

"There is no Measure for Measure to my affections. If the earth fails me, I can die, and go to God," said ----.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. This might be thought out at great length.

pilgrims will come to pay their tribute of reverence

Salem, Jany. 20th, 1842 11 o'clock A. M.

Truest Heart,

Here is thy husband in his old chamber, where he produced those stupendous works of fiction, which have since impressed the Universe with wonderment and awe! To this chamber, doubtless, in all succeeding ages, pilgrims will come to pay their tribute of reverence; they will put off their shoes at the threshold, for fear of desecrating the tattered old carpet. "There," they will exclaim, "is the very bed in which he slumbered, and where he was visited by those ethereal visions, which he afterward fixed forever in glowing words! There is the wash-stand, at which this exalted personage cleansed himself from the stains of earth, and rendered his outward man a fitting exponent of the pure soul within. There, in its mahogany frame, is the dressing-glass, which reflected that noble brow, those hyacinthine locks, that mouth, bright with smiles, or tremulous with feeling, that flashing or melting eye, that in short, every item of the magnanimous face of this unexampled man! There is the pine table there the old flag-bottomed chair in which he sat, and at which he scribbled, during his agonies of inspiration! There is the old chest of drawers, in which he kept what shirts a poor author may be supposed to have possessed! There is the closet, in which was reposited his threadbare suit of black! There is the worn-out shoe-brush with which this polished writer polished his boots. There is but I believe this will be pretty much all; so here I close the catalogue.

Most dear, I love thee beyond all limits, and write to thee because I cannot help it; nevertheless, writing grows more and more an inadequate and unsatisfactory mode of revealing myself to thee. I no longer think of saying anything deep, because I feel that the deepest and truest must remain unsaid. We have left expression at least, such expression as can be achieved with pen and ink far behind us. Even the spoken word has long been inadequate. Looks are a better language; but, bye-and-bye, our spirits will demand some more adequate expression even than these. And thus it will go on; until we shall be divested of these earthly forms, which are at once our medium of expression, and the impediments to full communion. Then we shall melt into [one] another, and all be expressed, once and continually, without a word without an effort.

Belovedest, my cold is very comfortable now. Mrs. Hillard gave me some homo I don't know how to spell it homeopathic medicine, of which I took a dose last night; and shall not need another. Art thou likewise well? Didst thou weary thy poor little self to death, yesterday? I do not think that I could possibly undergo the fatigue and distraction of mind which thou dost. Thou art ten times as powerful as I, because thou art so much more ethereal.

Sweetest, thy husband has recently been both lectured about and preached about, here in his native city. The preacher was Rev. Mr. Fox of Newburyport; but how he contrived to hook me into a sermon, I know not. I trust he took for his text that which was spoken of my namesake of old -- "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." Belovedest, if ever thou shouldst happen to hear me lauded on any public occasion, I shall expect thee to rise, and make thine own and my acknowledgments, in a neat and appropriate speech. Wilt thou not? Surely thou wilt in asmuch as I care little for applause, save as it shall please thee; so it is rather thy concern than mine.

Mine ownest, it is by no means comfortable to be separated from thee three whole days at a time. It is too great a gap in life. There is no sunshine in the days in which thou dost not shine on me. And speaking of sunshine, what a beautifullest day (to the outward eye, I mean) was yesterday; and to-day seems equally bright and glad some, although I have not yet tasted the fresh air. I trust that thou has flown abroad, and soared upward to the seventh heaven. But do not stay there, sweetest Dove! Come back for me; for I shall never get there, unless by the aid of thy wings.

Now God bless thee, and make thee happy and joyful, until Saturday evening, when thou must needs bear the infliction of

THINE OWNEST HUSBAND.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Mass.

the misery of being always under a mask

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

Fortune to come like a peddler with his goods, as wreaths of laurel, diamonds, crowns: selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid down?

The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.

The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims: to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to the young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing, sentimentalist lover.

What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress?" He must have been taken for a peddler traveling with his pack.

we are so miserably poor

Salem, Jany. 19th, 1846. Tuesday

Ownest Phoebe,

The shoe arrived last evening; but on what evidence thou dost so confidently accuse me of putting it into the trunk, I cannot imagine. Thou positively didst put it there thyself. I saw thee!

Dearest, if any money comes from New York by to-day's mail, I will come to Boston on Thursday morning, to escort thee home. Otherwise, I really do not think I ought. Heaven knows, I desire it; but as it is not necessary for thy safety, and as we are so miserably poor, methinks the dollar should be reserved for indispensables. I did hope the New York money would have come to hand before now. Providence must take our matters in hand very speedily.

I hope, Phoebe, thou hast not engaged to pay Winifred's passage, either to or from Boston. She told Mrs. Dromedary that she should not have gone with thee, only that her passage would be paid. She has a cousin living at the Essex House in this city; and the Dromedary thinks she is partly engaged to go there herself. This is the secret of her willingness to remain in Salem. Dotish as she appeared, she has wit enough to be fair and false, like all her countryfolk. It will be well to investigate this matter before thou returnest; and, if she really means to leave us, perhaps thou hadst better engage a new girl in Boston forthwith.

Poor little Una's back -- my heart bleeds for it. Do not come back till it is well, nor till thou thy self hast undergone thorough repairs, even though thou shouldst be compelled to hire a lodging.

Ownest, be careful rot to slip down. Thou art prudent in behalf of other people, but hast little caution on thine own account. In going to the cars do not get entangled in that great rush of people who throng out of the ferry-boat. Remain behind, and Heaven will find thee a seat. Would thou wast safe home again, eating thy potatoes, and glancing sideways at me with thy look of patient resignation. Never did I miss thee so much as during this separation. But for the idea of thee, my existence would be as cold and wintry as the weather is now, and with a cloudy gloom besides, instead of the dazzling sunshine. I was driven to play cards with Louisa, last evening!

God bless thee! I have nothing more to say, that can be said.

THINE OWNEST HUBAND.

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

A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil.

(These passages were written in Hawthorne's American Note-Books in 1840, but no specific date is given.)

1840.

A man, unknown, conscious of temptation to secret crimes, puts up a note in church, desiring the prayers of the congregation for one so tempted.

Some most secret thing, valued and honoured between lovers, to be hung up in public places, and made the subject of remark by the city, remarks, sneers, and laughter.

To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change, now an old man, now an old woman, a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick.

A ground-sparrow's nest in the slope of a bank, brought to view by mowing the grass, but still sheltered and comfortably hidden by a blackberryvine trailing over it. At first, four brown-speckled eggs, then two little bare young ones, which, on the slightest noise, lift their heads, and open wide mouths for food, immediately dropping their heads, after a broad gape. The action looks as if they were making a most earnest, agonized petition. In another egg, as in a coffin, I could discern the quiet, death-like form of the little bird. The whole thing had something awful and mysterious in it.

A coroner's inquest on a murdered man, the gathering of the jury to be described, and the characters of the members, some with secret guilt upon their souls.

To represent a man as spending life and the intensest labour in the accomplishment of some mechanical trifle, as in making a miniature coach to be drawn by fleas, or a dinner-service to be put into a cherry-stone.

A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil.

the air was like the touch of death itself

STEAMER "CALABRESE," January 17th. [1858]

If I had remained at Marseilles, I might have found many peculiarities and characteristics of that southern city to notice; but I fear that these will not be recorded if I leave them till I touch the soil of Italy. Indeed, I doubt whether there be anything really worth recording in the little distinctions between one nation and another; at any rate, after the first novelty is over, new things seem equally commonplace with the old. There is but one little interval when the mind is in such a state that it can catch the fleeting aroma of a new scene. And it is always so much pleasanter to enjoy this delicious newness than to attempt arresting it, that it requires great force of will to insist with one's self upon sitting down to write. I can do nothing with Marseilles, especially here, on the Mediterranean, long after nightfall, and when the steamer is pitching in a pretty lively way.

(Later.) I walked out with J---- yesterday morning, and reached the outskirts of the city, whence we could see the bold and picturesque heights that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. They rise into peaks, and the town being on their lower slope, descends from them towards the sea with a gradual sweep. Adown the streets that descend these declivities come little rivulets, running along over the pavement, close to the side-walks, as over a pebbly bed ; and though they look vastly like kennels, I saw women washing linen in these streams, and others dipping up the water for household purposes. The women appear very much in public at Marseilles. In the squares and places you see half-adozen of them together, sitting in a social circle on the bottoms of upturned baskets, knitting, talking, and enjoying the public sunshine, as if it were their own household fire. Not one in a thousand of them, probably, ever has a household fire for the purpose of keeping themselves warm, but only to do their little cookery; and when there is sunshine they take advantage of it, and in the short season of rain and frost they shrug their shoulders, put on what warm garments they have, and get through the winter somewhat as grasshoppers and butterflies do being summer insects like them. There certainly is a very keen and cutting air sharp as a razor and I saw ice along the borders of the little rivulets almost at noonday. To be sure, it is mid winter, and yet in the sunshine I found myself uncomfortably warm, but in the shade the air was like the touch of death itself. I do not like the climate.

There are a great number of public places in Marseilles, several of which are adorned with statues or fountains, or triumphal arches or columns, and set out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together and gossip. I never before heard from human lips anything like this bustle and babble, this thousandfold talk which you hear' all round about you in the crowd of a public square; so entirely different is it from the dulness of a crowd in England, where, as a rule, everybody is silent, and hardly half-a-dozen monosyllables will come from the lips of a thousand people. In Marseilles, on the contrary, a stream of unbroken talk seems to bubble from the lips of every individual. A great many interesting scenes take place in these squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into the Place Royal) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, and they took their departure.

I have been struck with the idle curiosity, and, at the same time, the courtesy and kindliness of the populace of Marseilles, and I meant to exemplify it by recording how Miss S---- and I attracted their notice, and became the centre of a crowd of at least fifty of them, while doing no more remarkable thing than settling with a cab-driver. But really this pitch and swell is getting too bad, and I shall go to bed, as the best chance of keeping myself in an equable state.

I have hardly seen a lady in Marseilles

HOTEL D'ANGLETERRE, January 15th. [1858]

On Tuesday morning (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly ordered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent hall, in any palace, than the diningsaloon, with its profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compartments; so that when the chandeliers are all a-light, it looks a fit place for princes to banquet in, and not very fit for the few Americans whom I saw scattered at its long tables . . .

By-the-bye, as we drove to the railway, we passed through the public square, where the Bastille formerly stood; and in the centre of it now stands a column, surmounted by a golden figure of Mercury (I think), which seems to be just on the point of casting itself from a gilt ball into the air. This statue is so buoyant, that the spectator feels quite willing to trust it to the viewless element, being as sure that it would be borne up as that a bird would fly.

Our first day's journey was wholly without interest, through a country entirely flat, and looking wretchedly brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slender, very prim and formal; there was ice wherever there happened to be any water to form it; there were occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of stone or plastered cottages, very dirty, with gable ends and earthen roofs, and a succession of this same landscape was all that we saw, whenever we rubbed away the congelation of our breath from the carriage windows. Thus we rode on, all day long, from eleven o'clock, with hardly a -five minutes' stop, till long after dark, when we came to Dijon, where there was a halt of twenty-five minutes for dinner. Then we set forth again, and rumbled forward, through cold and darkness without, until we reached Lyons at about ten o'clock. We left our luggage at the railway station, and took an omnibus for the Hotel de Provence, which we chose at a venture, among a score of other hotels.

As this hotel was a little off the direct route of the omnibus, the driver set us down at the corner of a street, and pointed to some lights, which he said designated the Hotel de Provence; and thither we proceeded, all seven of us, taking along a few carpet-bags and shawls, our equipage for the night. The porter of the hotel met us near its doorway, and ushered us, through an arch, into the inner quadrangle, and then up some old and worn steps, very broad, and appearing to be the principal staircase. At the first landing-place, an old woman and a waiter or two received us; and we went up two or three more flights of the same broad and worn stone staircases. What we could see of the house looked very old, and had the musty odour with which I first became acquainted at Chester.

After ascending to the proper level, we were conducted along a corridor, paved with octagonal earthen tiles; on one side, were windows, looking into the courtyard, on the other doors opening into the sleeping chambers. The corridor was of immense length, and seemed still to lengthen itself before us, as the glimmer of our conductor's candle went farther and farther into the obscurity. Our own chamber was at a vast distance along this passage; those of the rest of the party were on the hither side, but all this immense suite of rooms appeared to communicate by doors from one to another, like the chambers through which the reader wanders at midnight, in Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. And they were really splendid rooms, though of an old fashion, lofty, spacious, with floors of oak or other wood, inlaid in squares and crosses, and waxed till they were slippery, but without carpets. Our own sleeping-room had a deep fireplace, in which we ordered a fire, and asked if there were not some saloon already warmed, 'where we could get a cup of tea.

Hereupon the waiter led us back along the endless corridor, and down the old stone staircases, and out into the quadrangle, and journeyed with us along an exterior arcade, and finally threw open the door of the salle a manger, which proved to be a room of lofty height, with a vaulted roof, a stone floor and interior spaciousness sufficient for a baronial hall, the whole bearing the same aspect of times gone by, that characterised the rest of the house. There were two or three tables covered with white cloth, and we sat down at one of them and had our tea. Finally we wended back to our sleeping rooms, a considerable journey, so endless seemed the ancient hotel. I should like to know its history.

The fire made our great chamber look comfortable, and the fireplace threw out the heat better than the little square hole, over which we cowered in our saloon at the Hotel de Louvre . . .

In the morning we began our preparations for starting at ten. Issuing into the corridor, I found a soldier of the line, pacing to and fro there as sentinel. Another was posted in another corridor, into which I wandered by mistake; another stood in the inner courtyard, and another at the portecochere. They were not there the night before, and I know not whence nor why they came, unless that some officer of rank may have taken up his quarters at the hotel. Miss M- says she heard at Paris, that a considerable number of troops had recently been drawn together at Lyons, in consequence of symptoms of disaffection that have recently shown themselves here.

Before breakfast I went out to catch a momentary glimpse of the city. The street in which our hotel stands is near a large public square; in the centre is a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV.; and the square itself is called the Place de Louis le Grand. I wonder where this statue hid itself while the Revolution was raging in Lyons, and when the guillotine, perhaps, stood on that very spot.

The square was surrounded by stately buildings, but had what seemed to be barracks for soldiers at any rate mean little huts, deforming its ample space; and a soldier was on guard before the statue of Louis le Grand. It was a cold, misty morning, and a fog lay throughout the area, so that I could scarcely see from one side of it to the other.

Returning towards our hotel, I saw that it had an immense front, along which ran in gigantic letters, its title --

HOTEL DE PROVENCE ET DES AMBASSADEURS.

The excellence of the hotel lay rather in the faded pomp of its sleeping-rooms, and the vastness of its salle à manger, than in anything very good to eat or drink.

We left it, after a poor breakfast, and went to the railway station. Looking at the mountainous heap of our luggage the night before, we had missed a great carpet bag; and we now found that Miss M----'s trunk had been substituted for it, and, there being the proper number of packages as registered, it was impossible to convince the officials that any thing was wrong. We, of course, began to generalise forthwith, and pronounce the incident to be characteristic of French morality. They love a certain system and external correctness, but do not trouble themselves to be deeply in the right; and Miss M---- suggested that there used to be parallel cases in the French Revolution, when, so long as the assigned number were sent out of prison to be guillotined, the jailer did not much care whether they were the persons designated by the tribunal or not. At all events, we could get no satisfaction about the carpet-bag, and shall very probably be compelled to leave Marseilles without it.

This day's ride was through a far more picturesque country than that we saw yesterday. Heights began to rise imminent above our way, with sometimes a ruined castle wall upon them; on our left, the rail track kept close to the hills; on the other side there was the level bottom of a valley, with heights descending upon it a mile or a few miles away. Farther off we could see blue hills, shouldering high above the intermediate ones, and themselves worthy to be called mountains. These hills arranged themselves in beautiful groups, affording openings between them, and vistas of what lay beyond, and gorges which I suppose held a great deal of romantic scenery. By-and-by a river made its appearance,flowing swiftly in the same direction that we were travelling a beautiful and cleanly river, with white pebbly shores, and itself of a peculiar blue. It rushed along very fast, sometimes whitening over shallow descents, and even in its calmer intervals its surface was all covered with whirls and eddies, indicating that it dashed onward in haste. I do not now know the name of this river, but have set it down as the "Arrowy Rhone." It kept us company a long while, and I think we did not part with it as long as day light remained. I have seldom seen hill-scenery that struck me more than some that we saw to-day, and the old feudal towers and old villages at their feet; and the old churches, with spires shaped just like extinguishers, gave it an interest accumulating from many centuries past.

Still going southward, the vineyards began to border our track, together with what I at first took to be orchards, but soon found were plantations of olive trees, which grow to a much larger size than I supposed, and look almost exactly like very crabbed and eccentric apple trees. Neither they nor the vine yards add anything to the picturesqueness of the landscape.

On the whole, I should [have been delighted with all this scenery if it had not looked so bleak, barren, brown, and bare; so like the wintry New England before the snow has fallen. It was very cold, too; ice along the borders of streams, even among the vineyards and olives. The houses are of rather a different shape here than farther northward, their roofs being not nearly so sloping. They are almost invariably covered with white plaster; the farm houses have their outbuildings in connection with the dwelling the whole surrounding three sides of a quadrangle.

We travelled far into the night, swallowed a cold and hasty dinner at Avignon, and reached Marseilles sorely wearied, at about eleven o'clock. We took a cab to the Hotel d'Angleterre (two cabs, to be quite accurate), and find it a very poor place.

To go back a little, as the sun went down, we looked out of the window of our railway-carriage, and saw a sky that reminded us of what we used to see day after day in America, and what we have not seen since; and, after sunset, the horizon burned and glowed with rich crimson and orange lustre, looking at once warm and cold. After it grew dark, the stars brightened, and Miss M---- from her window pointed out some of the planets to the children, she being as familiar with them as a gardener with his flowers. They were as bright as diamonds.

We had a wretched breakfast, and J---- and I then went to the railway station to see about our luggage. On our walk back we went astray, passing by a triumphal arch, erected by the Marseillais, in honour of Louis Napoleon; but we inquired our way of old women and soldiers, who were very kind and courteous especially the latter and were directed aright. We came to a large, oblong, public place, set with trees, but devoid of grass, like all public places in France. In the middle of it was a bronze statue of an ecclesiastical personage, stretching forth his hands in the attitude of addressing the people, or of throwing a benediction over them. It was some archbishop, who had distinguished himself by his humanity and devotedness, during the plague of 1720. At the moment of our arrival, the piazza was quite thronged with people, who seemed to be talking amongst themselves with considerable earnestness, although without any actual excitement. They were smoking cigars; and we judged that they were only loitering here for the sake of the sunshine, having no fires at home, and nothing to do. Some looked like gentlemen, others like peasants; most of them I should have taken for the lazzaroni of this southern city men with cloth caps, like the classic libertycap, or with wide-awake hats. There were one or two women of the lower classes, without bonnets, the elder ones with white caps, the younger bareheaded. I have hardly seen a lady in Marseilles; and I suspect, it being a commercial city, and dirty to the last degree, ill-built, narrow-streeted, and sometimes pestilential, there are few or no families of gentility resident here.

Returning to the hotel, we found the rest of the party ready to go out; so. we all issued forth in a body, and inquired our way to the telegraph-office, in order to send my message about the carpet-bag. In a street through which we had to pass (and which seemed to be the Exchange, or its precincts), there was a crowd even denser yes, much denser than that which we saw in the square of the Archbishop's statue; and each man was talking to his neighbour in a vivid, animated way, as if business were very brisk to-day.

At the telegraph-office, we discovered the cause that had brought out these many people. There had been attempts on the Emperor's life unsuccessful, as they seem fated to be, though some mischief was done to those near him. I rather think the good people of Marseilles were glad of the attempt, as an item of news and gossip, and did not very greatly care whether it were successful or no. It seemed to have roused their vivacity rather than their interest. The only account I have seen of it was in the brief public dispatch from the Syndic (or whatever he be) of Paris to the chief authority of Marseilles, which was printed and posted in various conspicuous places. The only chance of knowing the truth with any fulness of detail would be to come across an English paper. We have had a banner hoisted half-mast in front of our hotel to-day as a token, the head-waiter tells me, of sympathy and sorrow for the General and other persons who were slain by this treasonable attempt.

J---- and I now wandered by ourselves along a circular line of quays, having, on one side of us, a thick forest of masts, while, on the other, was a sweep of shops, book-stalls, sailors' restaurants and drinking houses, fruit-sellers, candy-women, and all manner of open-air dealers and pedlars;
little children playing, and jumping the rope, and such a babble and bustle as I never saw or heard before; the sun lying along the whole sweep, very hot, and evidently very grateful to those who basked in it. Whenever I passed into the shade, immediately from too warm, I became too cold. The sunshine was like hot air; the shade, like the touch of cold steel sharp, hard, yet exhilarating. From the broad street of the quays, narrow, thread like lanes pierced up between the edifices, calling themselves streets, yet so narrow, that a person in the middle could almost touch the houses on either hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each side by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and, from the time of their first being built, could never have had a gleam of sunshine in them, always in shadow, always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my heretofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and everywhere else; and it evidently troubles nobody, no more than if all the people were pigs in a pigsty . . .

Passing by all this sweep of quays, J---- and I ascended to an elevated walk, overlooking the harbour, and far beyond it; for here we had our first view of the Mediterranean, blue as heaven, and bright with sunshine. It was a bay, widening forth into the open deep, and bordered with heights, and bold, picturesque headlands, some of which had either fortresses or convents on them. Several boats and one brig were under sail, making their way towards the port. I have never seen a finer sea-view. Behind the town, there seemed to be a mountainous landscape, imperfectly visible, in consequence of the intervening edifices.

the Famous Old People

(Continued from 12 January 1841)

Jany. 15th. Friday. Oh, belovedest, what a weary week is this! Never did I experience the like. I went to bed last night, positively dismal and comfortless. Wilt thou know thy husband's face, when we meet again? Art thou much changed by the flight of years, my poor little wife? Is thy hair turned gray? Dost thou wear a day-cap, as well as a night cap? How long since didst thou begin to use spectacles? Perhaps thou wilt not like to have me see thee now that Time has done his worst to mar thy beauty; but fear thou not, sweetest Dove, for what I have loved and admired in thee is eternal. I shall look through the envious mist of age, and discern thy immortal grace as perfectly as in the light of Paradise. As for thy husband, he is grown quite bald and gray, and has very deep wrinkles across his brow, and crowsfeet and furrows all over his face. His eyesight fails him, so that he can only read the largest print in the broadest day-light; but it is a singular circumstance, that he makes out to decypher the pygmy characters of thy epistles, even by the faintest twilight. The secret is, that they are characters of light to him, so that he could doubtless read them in midnight darkness. Art thou not glad, belovedest, that thou wast ordained to be a heavenly light to thy husband, amid the dreary twilight of age?

Grandfather is very anxious to know what has become of his chair, and the Famous Old People who sat in it. I tell him that it will probably arrive in the course of to-day; and that he need not be so impatient; for the public will be very well content to wait, even were it till Doomsday. He acquiesces, but scolds, nevertheless.

I saw thy cousin Man Tappan yesterday, and felt the better for it, because she is connected with thee in my mind. Dearest, I love thee very much! ! ! ! Art thou not astonished? I wish to ask thee a question, but will reserve it tor the extreme end of this letter.

I trust that thou art quite, well, belovedest. That headache took a very unfair advantage, in attacking thee while thou wast away from thy husband. It is his province to guard thee both from head-ache and heart-ache; and thou performest the same blessed office for him, so far as regards the heart-ache as to the head-ache, he knows it not, probably because his head is like a block of wood.

Now good-bye, dearest, sweetest, loveliest, holiest, truest, suitablest little wife. I worship thee. Thou art my type of womanly perfection. Thou keepest my heart pure, and elevatest me above the world. Thou enablest me to interpret the riddle of life, and it Host me with faith in the unseen and better land, because thou leadest me thither continually, God bless thee forever.

Dost thou love me?

Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Mass.

A lament for life's wasted sunshine.

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

A sketch illustrating the imperfect compensations which time makes for its devastations on the person, giving a wreath of laurel while it causes baldness, honours for infirmities, wealth for a broken constitution, and at last, when a man has everything that seems desirable, death seizes him. To contrast the man who has thus reached the summit of ambition with the ambitious youth.

* * *
Walking along the track of the railroad, I observed a place where the workmen had bored a hole through the solid rock, in order to blast it; but, striking a spring of water beneath the rock, it gushed up through the hole. It looked as if the water were contained within the rock.

* * *
A Fancy Ball, in which the prominent American writers should appear, dressed in character.

* * *
A lament for life's wasted sunshine.

A type of envy or some other evil passion.

Editor's note: the following entries were written between October 1836 and July 1837; no specific date is written in the journal.

Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time of Edward IV. It serves as a landmark for an amazing extent of country.

A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

A snake, taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or some other evil passion.

an unspiritual shadow

Salem, Jany. 12th, 1841

Infinitely dearest, I went to the post office yesterday, after dinner, and inquiring for a letter, thy "visible silence" was put into my hands. Canst thou remotely imagine how glad I was? Hast thou also been gladdened by an uncouth scribbling, which thy husband dispatched to thee on Monday? Oh, belovedest, no words can tell how thirsty my spirit is for thine! Surely I was very reprehensible to conceive the idea of spending a whole week and more away from thee. Why didst thou not scold me? and go with me wherever I went? Without thee, I have but the semblance of lite. All the world hereabouts seems dull and drowsy a vision, but without any spirituality and I, likewise an unspiritual shadow, struggle vainly to catch hold of something real. Thou art my reality; and nothing else is real for me, unless thou give it that golden quality by thy touch.

Dearest, how earnest thou by the headache? Thou shouldst have dreamed of thy husband's breast, instead of that Arabian execution; and then thou wouldst have awaked with a very delicious thrill in thy heart, and no pain in thy head. And what wilt thou do to-day, persecuted little Dove, when thy abiding-place will be a Babel of talkers? Would that Miss Margaret Fuller might lose her tongue! or my Dove her ears, and so be left wholly to her husband s golden silence! Dearest wife, I truly think that we could dispense with audible speech, and yet never feel the want of an interpreter between our spirits. We have soared into a region where we talk together in a language that can have no earthly echo. Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb! for I suppose he was dumb at the Creation, and must perform an entire circle in order to return to that blessed state. Cousin Christopher, by thy account, seems to be of the same opinion, and is gradually learning to talk without the use of his voice.

the old woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and wood

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 12th. [1858]

This has been a bright day as regards weather; but I have done little on nothing worth recording. After breakfast, I set out in quest of the consul, and found him up a court, at 51, Rue Cammartin, in an office rather smaller, I think, than mine at Liverpool; but, to say the truth, a little better furnished. I was received in the outer apartment by an elderly, brisk-looking man, in whose air, respectful and subservient, and yet with a kind of authority in it, I recognised the vice-consul. He introduced me to Mr. ---- , who sat writing in an inner room; a very gentlemanly, courteous, cool man of the world, whom I should take to be an excellent person for consul at Paris. He tells me that he has resided here some years, although his occupancy of the consulate dates only from November last. Consulting him respecting my passport, he gave me what appear good reasons why I should get all the necessary vises here; for example, that the vise of a minister carries more weight than that of a consul; and especially that an Austrian consul will never vise a passport unless he sees his minister's name upon it. Mr. has travelled much in Italy, and ought to be able to give me sound advice. His opinion was, that at this season of the year I had better go by steamer to Civita Vecchia, instead of landing at Leghorn, and thence journeying to Rome. On this point I shall decide when the time comes. As I left the office the vice-consul informed me that there was a charge of five francs and some sous for the consul's visé, a tax which surprised me the whole business of passports having been taken from consuls before I quitted office, and the consular fee having been annulled even earlier. However, no doubt Mr. ---- had a fair claim to my five francs; but, really, it is not half so pleasant to pay a consular fee as it used to be to receive it.

Afterwards I walked to Notre-Dame, the rich front of which I viewed with more attention than yesterday. There are whole histories, carved in stone figures, within the vaulted arches of the three entrances in this west front, and twelve apostles in a row above, and as much other sculpture as would take a month to see. We then walked quite round it, but I had no sense of immensity from it, not even that of great height, as from many of the cathedrals of England. It stands very near the Seine; indeed, if I mistake not, it is on an island formed by two branches of the river. Behind it, in what seems to be a small public ground (or garden, if a space entirely denuded of grass or other green thing, except a few trees can be called so), with benches, and a monument in the midst. This quarter of the city looks old, and appears to be inhabited by poor people, and to be busied about small and petty affairs; the most picturesque business that I saw being that of the old woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and of wood at the cathedral door. We bought two of these yesterday.

I must again speak of the horrible muddiness, not only of this part of the city, but of all Paris, so far as I have traversed it to-day. My ways, since I came to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I never before saw a pavement so universally over spread with mud-padding as that of Paris. It is difficult to imagine where so much filth can come from.

After dinner I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries; but as dusk was coming on, and as I was afraid of being shut up within the iron railing, I did not have time to examine them particularly. There are wide, intersecting walks, fountains, broad basins, and many statues; but almost the whole surface of the gardens is barren earth, instead of the verdure that would beautify an English pleasure-ground of this sort. In the summer it has doubtless an agreeable shade; but at this season the naked branches look meagre, and sprout from slender trunks. Like the trees in the Champs Elysees, those, I presume, in the gardens of the Tuileries need renewing every few years. The same is true of the human race families becoming extinct after a generation or two of residence in Paris. Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever.

Novels, fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behaviour and etiquette, collections of bon mots

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 11th. [1858]

This was another chill, raw day, characterised by a spitefulness of atmosphere which I do not remember ever to have experienced in my own dear country. We meant to have visited the Hotel des Invalides, but J--- and I walked to the Rivoli, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees, and to the Place de Beaujon, and to the residence of the American minister, where I wished to arrange about my passport. After speaking with the Secretary of Legation, we were ushered into the minister's private room, where he received me with great kindness. Mr. ---- is an old gentleman with a white head, and a large, florid face, which has an expression of amiability, not unmingled with a certain dignity. He did not rise from his armchair to greet me a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the gout, feeling it impossible that he should have willingly failed in courtesy to one of his twenty-five million sovereigns. In response to some remark of mine about the shabby way in which our government treats its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of his own troubles on that score; then expressed a hope that I had made a good thing out of my consulate, and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign, to which I replied that, for various reasons, I had resigned of my own accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. We agreed, however, in disapproving the system of periodical change in our foreign officials; and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought to be a citizen both of his native country, and of the one in which he resided; and that his possibility of beneficent influence depended largely on his being so. Apropos to which Mr. ---- said that he had once asked a diplomatic friend of long experience, what was the first duty of a minister. "To love his own country, and to watch over its interests," answered the diplomatist. "And his second duty?" asked Mr. ----." To love and to promote the interests of the country to which he is accredited," said his friend. This is a very Christian and sensible view of the matter; but it can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplomatic history, that a minister can have had time to overcome his first rude and ignorant prejudice against the country of his mission; and if there were any suspicion of his having done so, it would be held abundantly sufficient ground for his recall. I like Mr. ----, a good-hearted, sensible old man.

J---- and I returned along the Champs Elysees, and, crossing the Seine, kept on our way by the river's brink, looking at the titles of books on the long lines of stalls that extend between the bridges. Novels, fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behaviour and etiquette, collections of bon mots and of songs, were interspersed with volumes in the old style of calf and gilt binding, the works of the classics of French literature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and of those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to look at these books. On the other side of the street was a range of tall edifices with shops beneath, and the quick stir of French life hurrying, and babbling, and swarming along the side walk. We passed two or three bridges, occurring at short intervals, and at last we re-crossed the Seine by a bridge which oversteps the river, from a point near the National Institute, and reaches the other side, not far from the Louvre . . .

Though the day was so disagreeable, we thought it best not to lose the remainder of it, and therefore set out to visit the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. We took a fiacre in the Place de Carrousel, and drove to the door. On entering, we found the interior miserably shut off from view by the stagings erected for the purpose of repairs. Penetrating from the nave towards the chancel, an official personage signified to us, that we must first purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, on the floor of the cathedral. [But this was a mistake. It was the archbishop who was killed in the insurrection of 1848. Two joints of his backbone were also shown.] Also, that some gorgeously-embroidered vestments, which he drew forth, had been used at the coronation of Napoleon I. There were two large, full-length portraits hanging aloft in the sacristy, and a gold or silver gilt, or, at all events, gilt image of the Virgin, as large as life, standing on a pedestal. The guide had much to say about these, but, under standing him so imperfectly, I have nothing to record.

The guide's supervision of us seemed not to extend beyond this sacristy, on quitting which he gave us permission to go where we pleased, only intimating a hope that we would not forget him; so I gave him half a franc, though thereby violating an inhibition on the printed ticket of entrance.

We had been much disappointed at first by the apparently narrow limits of the interior of this famous church; but now, as we made our way round the choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its painted window, its crucifix, its pictures, its confessional, and afterwards came back into the nave, where arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to the conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the greatest of pities that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre of the edifice, and screening all its best effects. It seems to have been already most richly ornamented, its roof being painted, and the capitals of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illumi nated in fresco; and no doubt it will shine out gorgeously when all the repairs and adornments shall be completed. Even now it gave to my actual sight what I have often tried to imagine in my visits to the English cathedrals the pristine glory of those edifices, when they stood glowing with gold and picture, fresh from the architects' and adorners' hands.

The interior loftiness of Notre-Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity which would swallow up any thing that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us and spreading about us in such a firmamental way, that we cannot spoil them by any pettiness of our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our pettiness into their own immensity. Every little fantasy finds its place and propriety in them, like a flower on the earth's broad bosom.

When we emerged from the cathedral, we found it beginning to rain or snow, or both; and, as we had dismissed our fiacre at the door, and could find no other, we were at a loss what to do. We stood a few moments on the steps of the Hotel Dieu, looking up at the front of Notre-Dame, with its twin towers, and its three deep-pointed arches, piercing through a great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like gloom around these entrances. The front is very rich. Though so huge, and all of grey stone, it is carved and fretted with statues and innumerable devices, as cunningly as any ivory casket in which relics are kept; but its size did not so much impress me, ...

Among the relics of kings and princes

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 10th. [1858]

We had purposed going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to-day, but the weather and walking were too unfavourable for a distant expedition; so we merely went across the street to the Louvre. . . .

Our principal object this morning was to see the pencil drawings by eminent artists. Of these the Louvre has a very rich collection, occupying many apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibale Caracci, Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a happiness in these rude, off hand sketches, which they never felt again in the same work, and which resulted in disappointment, after they had done their best. To an artist, the collection must be most deeply interesting: to myself, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome.

In the same suite of apartments, there is a collection of miniatures, some of them very exquisite, and absolutely life-like, on their small scale. I observed two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of them especially so, with its cloud-like, white hair. I do not think we have produced a man so interesting to contemplate, in many points of view, as he. Most of our great men are of a character that I find it impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavishing any amount of sympathy upon them. Not so Franklin, who had a great deal of common and uncommon human nature in him.

Much of the time, while my wife was looking at the drawings, I sat observing the crowd of Sunday visitors. They were generally of a lower class than those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of uniforms, and, for the most part, ugly little men, but decorous and well-behaved. I saw medals on many of their breasts, denoting Crimean service; some wore the English medal, with Queen Victoria's head upon it. A blue coat, with red, baggy trousers, was the most usual uniform. Some had short-breasted coats, made in the same style as those of the first Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen, distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent, in coloured gowns and caps; and labouring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen, young artists, too, no doubt, looking with educated eyes, at these art-treasures, and I think as a general thing, each man was mated with a woman. The soldiers, however, came in pairs or little squads, accompanied by women. I did not much like any of the French faces, and yet I am not sure that there is not more resemblance between them and the American physiognomy, than between the latter and the English. The women are not pretty, but in all ranks above the lowest they have a trained expression that supplies the place of beauty.

I was wearied to death with the drawings, and began to have that dreary and desperate feeling which has often come upon me when the sights last longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our time in Paris, however, is brief and precious, we next inquired our way to the galleries of sculpture, and these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, on the basement floor. Hall after hall opened interminably before us, and on either side of us, paved and encrusted with variegated and beautifully polished marble, relieved against which stand the antique statues and groups, interspersed with great urns and vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets, busts of historic personages, and all manner of shapes of marble, which consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. Not that I really did feel much impressed by any of this sculpture then, nor saw more than two or three things which I thought very beautiful; but whether it be good or no, I suppose the world has nothing better, unless it be a few world-renowned statues in Italy. I was even more struck by the skill and ingenuity of the French in arranging these sculptural remains, than by the value of the sculptures themselves. The galleries, I should judge, have been recently prepared, and on a magnificent system, the adornments being yet by no means completed, for besides the floor and wall-casings of rich, polished marble, the vaulted ceilings of some of the apartments are painted in fresco, causing them to glow as if the sky were opened. It must be owned, however, that the statuary, often time-worn and darkened from its original brilliancy by weather stains, does not suit well as furniture for such splendid rooms. When we see a perfection of modern finish around them, we recognise that most of these statues had been thrown down from their pedestals, hundreds of years ago, and have been battered and externally degraded; and though whatever spiritual beauty they ever had may still remain, yet this is not made more apparent by the contrast betwixt the new gloss of modern upholstery, and their tarnished, even if immortal grace. I rather think the English have given really the more hospitable reception to the maimed Theseus, and his broken-nosed, broken-legged, head less companions, because flouting them with no gorgeous fittings up.

By this time poor J---- (who, with his taste for art yet undeveloped, is the companion of all our visits to sculpture and picture-galleries) was woefully hungry, and for bread we had given him a stone, not one stone, but a thousand. We returned to the hotel, and it being too damp and raw to go to our Restaurant des Echelles, we dined at the hotel. In my opinion it would require less time to cultivate our gastronomic taste than taste of any other kind; and, on the whole, I am not sure that a man would not be wise to afford himself a little discipline in this line. It is certainly throwing away the bounties of providence, to treat them as the English do, producing from better materials than the French have to work upon, nothing but sirloins, joints, joints steaks, steaks, steaks chops, chops, chops, chops! We had a soup to-day, in which twenty kinds of vegetables were represented, and manifested each its own aroma; a fillet of stewed beef, and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fricassee. We had a bottle of Chablis, and renewed ourselves, at the close of the banquet, with a plate of Chateaubriand ice. It was all very good, and we respected ourselves far more than if we had eaten a quantity of red roast beef; but I am not quite sure that we were right . . .

Among the relics of kings and princes, I do not know that there was anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map a hemisphere of the world, which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade; and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.' s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword and sceptre, and the last Dauphin's little toy-cannon, and so much between the two!

the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, though still a long way off

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 9th.

.... Last evening Mr. Fezandie called. He spoke very freely respecting the Emperor and the hatred entertained against him in France; but said that he is more powerful that is, more firmly fixed as a ruler, than ever the first Napoleon was. We, who look back upon the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the past a great boulder in history, cannot well estimate how momentary and unsubstantial the great Captain may have appeared to those who beheld his rise out of obscurity. They never, perhaps, took the reality of his career fairly into their minds, before it was over. The present Emperor, I believe, has already been as long in possession of the supreme power as his uncle was. I should like to see him, and may, perhaps, do so, as he is our neighbour, across the way.

This morning Miss ----, the celebrated astronomical lady, called. She had brought a letter of introduction to me, while consul; and her purpose now was to see if we could take her as one of our party to Rome, whither she likewise is bound. We readily consented, for she seems to be a simple, strong, healthy-humoured woman, who will not fling herself as a burthen on our shoulders; and my only wonder is that a person evidently so able to take care of herself should wish to have an escort.

We issued forth at about eleven, and went down the Rue St. Honore, which is narrow, and has houses of five or six stories on either side, between which runs the streets like a gully in a rock. One face of our hotel borders and looks on this street. After going a good way, we came to an insersection with another street, the name of which I forget; but, at this point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being light coloured stone; but I never saw anything that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, crowded, and rambling street.

Thence we turned into the Rue St. Denis, which is one of the oldest streets in Paris, and is said to have been first marked out by the track of the saint's foot steps, where, after his martyrdom, he walked along it, with his head under his arm, in quest of a burialplace. This legend may account for any crookedness of the street, for it could not reasonably be asked of a headless man that he should walk straight.

Through some other indirections we at last found the Rue Bergere, down which I went with J---- in quest of Hottinguer & Co., the bankers, while the rest of us went along the Boulevards, towards the Church of the Madeleine. . . . This business accomplished, J---- and I threaded our way back, and overtook the rest of the party, still a good distance from the Madeleine. I know not why the Boulevards are called so. They are a succession of broad walks through broad streets, and were much thronged with people, most of whom appeared to be bent more on pleasure than business. The sun, long before this, had come out brightly, and gave us the first genial and comfortable sensations which we have had in Paris.

Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most beautiful church, that might have been adapted from Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each side there is a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by those of the Parthenon. A mourning coach, arrayed in black and silver, was drawn up at the steps, and the front of the church was hung with black cloth, which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing other people going in, we entered along with them. Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. The entrance to the nave is beneath a most stately arch; and three arches of equal height open from the nave to the side aisles; and at the end of the nave is another great arch, rising, with a vaulted half-dome, over the high altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar: all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen, smiling down upon angels and archangels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing themselves with their heavy marble wings. There is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one. The restored Bourbon remade it into a church; but it still has a heathenish look, and will never lose it.

When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward towards the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, and round the altar, was hung with broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well: I never saw anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a goldembroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of a military man.

Before the close of the service a contribution-box or, rather, a black velvet bag was handed about by this military verger; and I gave J--- a franc to put in, though I did not in the least know for what.

Issuing from the church, we inquired of two or three persons who was the distinguished defunct at whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we had some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last week, and is still above ground. But it proved to be only a Madame Mentel, or some such name, whom nobody had ever before heard of. I forgot to say that her coffin was taken from beneath the illuminated pall, and carried out of the church before us.

When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of Heaven), to Bonaparte's Triumphal Arch. The Champs Elysees may look pretty in summer; though I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, in which Nature has either not been invited to take any part, or has declined to do so. There were merrygo-rounds, wooden horses, and other provision for children's amusements among the trees ; and booths, and tables of cakes, and candy women; and restaurants on the borders of the wood ; but very few people there; and doubtless we can form no idea of what the scene might become when alive with French gaiety and vivacity.

As we walked onward, the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, though still a long way off. It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful directness right towards it.

On our way homeward we visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round-androundabout with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, still ardent enough to expend a franc or two in this way.

French Note-books

The splendour of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me altogether by surprise

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 8th [1858].

It was so fearfully cold this morning that I really felt little or no curiosity to see the city. . . . Until after one o'clock, therefore, I knew nothing of Paris except the lights which I had seen beneath our window the evening before, far, far downward, in the narrow Rue St. Honore, and the rumble of the wheels, which continued later than I was awake to hear it, and began again before dawn. I could see, too, tall houses, that seemed to be occupied in every story, and that had windows on the steep roofs. One of these houses is six stories high. This Rue St. Honore is one of the old streets in Paris, and is that in which Henry IV. was assassinated; but it has not, in this part of it, the aspect of antiquity.

After one o'clock we all went out and walked along the Rue de Rivoli. . . . We are here, right in the midst of Paris, and close to whatever is best known to those who hear or read about it the Louvre being across the street, the Palais Royal but a little way off, the Tuileries joining to the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde just beyond, verging on which is the Champs Elysees. We looked about us for a suitable place to dine, and soon found the Restaurant des Echelles, where we entered at a venture, and were courteously received. It has a handsomely furnished saloon, much set off with gilding and mirrors; and appears to be frequented by English and Americans; its carte, a bound volume, being printed in English as well as French. . . .

It was now nearly four o'clock, and too late to visit the galleries of the Louvre, or to do anything else but walk a little way along the street. The splendour of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me altogether by surprise: such stately edifices, prolonging themselves in unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, ever and anon, a long vista of a street, with a column rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch, wrought in memory of some grand event. The light stone or stucco, wholly untarnished by smoke and soot, puts London to the blush, if a blush could be seen on its dingy face; but, indeed, London is not to be mentioned with, nor compared even with Paris. I never knew what a palace was till I had a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuileries; never had my idea of a city been gratified till I trod those stately streets. The life of the scene, too, is infinitely more picturesque than that of London, with its monstrous throng of grim faces and black coats: whereas, here, you see soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats, Zouaves with turbans, long mantles, and bronzed, half Moorish faces; and a great many people whom you perceive to be outside of your experience, and know them ugly to look at, and fancy them villainous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards the French people; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances melt and mingle with mine. But they do grand and beautiful things in the architectural way; and I am grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is a most splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect trophies in of all its triumphs; and on one side of it is the Tuileries, on the opposite side the Champs Elysees, and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw large cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. The Champs Elysees, so far as I saw it, had not a grassy soil beneath its trees; but the bare earth, white and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else, would assure me that I was out of England.

We had time only to take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk; and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg new, bright, magnificent, and desperately cold.

A great part of this architectural splendour is due to the present Emperor, who has wrought a great change in the aspect of the city within a very few years. A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, ought to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, since he makes it his policy to illustrate his capital with palatial edifices, which are, however, better for a stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay for.

We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing or glimpsing at some of the galleries of the Louvre. I must confess that the vast and beautiful edifice struck me far more than the pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains -- the shell more than the kernel inside: such noble suites of rooms and halls were those through which we first passed, containing Egyptian, and, farther onward, Greek and Roman antiquities; the walls cased in variegated marbles; the ceilings glowing with beautiful frescoes; the whole extended into infinite vistas by mirrors that seemed like vacancy, and multiplied everything forever. The picture-rooms are not so splendid, and the pictures themselves did not greatly win upon me in this one day. Many artists were employed in copying them, especially in the rooms hung with the productions of French painters. Not a few of these copyists were females ; most of them were young men, picturesquely moustached and bearded; but some were elderly, who, it was pitiful to think, had passed through life without so much success as now to paint pictures of their own.

From the pictures we went into a suite of rooms where are preserved many relics of the ancient and later kings of France; more relics of the elder ones, indeed, than I supposed had remained extant through the Revolution. The French seem to like to keep memorials of whatever they do, and of whatever their forefathers have done, even if it be ever so little to their credit; and perhaps they do not take matters sufficiently to heart to detest anything that has ever happened. What surprised me most were the golden sceptre and the magnificent sword and other gorgeous relics of Charlemagne a person whom I had always associated with a sheepskin cloak. There were suits of armour and weapons that had been worn and handled by a great many of the French kings; and a religious book that had belonged to St. Louis; a dressing-glass, most richly set with precious stones, which formerly stood on the toilette-table of Catherine de Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers had been. And there were a thousand other treasures, just as well worth mentioning as these. If each monarch could have been summoned from Hades to claim his own relics, we should have had the halls full of the old Childerics, Charleses, Bourbons and Capets, Henrys and Louises, snatching with ghostly hands at sceptres, swords, armour, and mantles; and Napoleon would have seen, apparently, almost everything that personally belonged to him his coat, his cocked hats, his camp-desk, his field bed, his knives, forks, and plates, and even a lock of his hair. I must let it all go. These things cannot be reproduced by pen and ink.

Dialogs of the unborn, like dialogs of the dead

(These passages were written in Hawthorne's American Note-Books after 3 January 1839, but no specific date is given.)

A very fanciful person, when dead, to have his burial in a cloud.

"A story there passeth of an Indian king that sent unto Alexander a fair woman, fed with aconite and other poisons, with this intent complexionally to destroy him!"Sir T. Browne.

Dialogues of the unborn, like dialogues of the dead, -- or between two young children.

A mortal symptom for a person being to lose his own aspect and to take the family lineaments, which were hidden deep in the healthful visage. Perhaps a seeker might thus recognize the man he had sought, after long intercourse with him unknowingly.

Some moderns to build a fire on Ararat with the remnants of the ark.

Two little boats of cork, with a magnet in one and steel in the other.

To have ice in one's blood.

To make a story of all strange and impossible things, as the Salamander, the Phoenix.

The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae?. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a boy is born, whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait. At some critical juncture, the resemblance is found to be perfect. A prophecy may be connected.

A person to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly and holily.

my first advance into French territory

HOTEL DE LOUVRE, January 6th, 1858.

On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags being all ready packed and labelled, we began to prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at the door by half-past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already many people in the streets, growing more numerous as we drove city-ward; and, in Newgate Street, there was such a number of market-carts, that we almost came to a dead lock with some of them. At the station we found several persons who were apparently going in the same train with us, sitting round the fire of the waiting-room. Since I came to England there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the atmosphere. We started at half-past eight, having taken through tickets to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we started; but it did not make us more than half-comfortable, and the frost soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we could only glimpse at the green fields immortally green, whatever winter can do against them and, at here and there, a stream or pool, with the ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes; and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to find nothing genial and hospitable there any more.

At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway station close upon a shingly beach, on which the sea broke in foam, and which J--- reported as strewn with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with an old church in the midst; and, close at hand, the pier, where lay the steamer in which we were to embark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no heart to explore the town, or pick up shells with J--- on the beach; so we kept within doors during the two hours of our stay, now and then looking out of the windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the British Channel generally communicates to the craft that navigate it.

At about one o'clock we went on board, and were soon under steam, at a rate that quickly showed a long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind us. It is a very dusky white, by-the-bye, and the cliffs themselves do not seem, at a distance, to be of imposing height, and have too even an outline to be picturesque.

As we increased our distance from England, the French coast came more and more distinctly in sight, with a low, wavy outline, not very well worth looking at, except because it was the coast of France. Indeed, I looked at it but little; for the wind was bleak and boisterous, and I went down into the cabin, where I found the fire very comfortable, and several people were stretched on sofas in a state of placid wretchedness I have never suffered from sea sickness, but had been somewhat apprehensive of this rough strait between England and France, which seems to have more potency over people's stomachs than ten times the extent of sea in other quarters.

Our passage was of two hours, at the end of which we landed on French soil, and found ourselves immediately in the clutches of the Custom-house officers, who, however, merely made a momentary examination of my passport, and allowed us to pass without opening so much as one of our carpet-bags. The great bulk of our luggage had been registered through to Paris, for examination after our arrival there.

We left Boulogne in about an hour after our arrival, when it was already a darkening twilight. The weather had grown colder than ever, since our arrival in sunny France, and the night was now setting in, wickedly black and dreary. The frost hardened upon the carriage windows in such thickness that I could scarcely scratch a peep-hole through it; but, from such glimpses as I could catch, the aspect of the country seemed pretty much to resemble the December aspect of my dear native land, broad, bare, brown fields, with streaks of snow at the foot of ridges, and along fences, or in the furrows of ploughed soil. There was ice wherever there happened to be water to form it.

We had feet-warmers in the carriage, but the cold crept in nevertheless; and I do not remember hardly in my life a more disagreeable short journey than this, my first advance into French territory. My impression of France will always be that it is an Arctic region. At any season of the year, the tract over which we passed yesterday must be an uninteresting one as regards its natural features; and the only adornment, as far as I could observe, which art has given it, consists in straight rows of very stifflooking and slender-stemmed trees. In the dusk they resembled poplar trees.

Weary and frost-bitten morally, if not physically we reached Amiens in three or four hours, and here I underwent much annoyance from the French railway officials and attendants, who, I believe, did not mean to incommode me, but rather to forward my purposes as far as they well could. If they would speak slowly and distinctly I might understand them well enough, being perfectly familiar with the written language, and knowing the principles of its pronunciation; but, in their customary rapid utterance, it sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties. ... It gives a taciturn personage like myself a new conception as to the value of speech, even to him, when he finds himself unable either to speak or understand.

Finally, being advised on all hands to go to the Hotel de Rhin, we were carried thither in an omnibus, rattling over a rough pavement, through an invisible and frozen town; and, on our arrival, were ushered into a handsome salon, as chill as a tomb. They made a little bit of a wood fire for us in a low and deep chimney-hole, which let a hundred times more heat escape up the flue than it sent into the room.

In the morning we sallied forth to see the Cathedral.

The aspect of the old French town was very different from anything English; whiter, infinitely cleaner; higher and narrower houses the entrance to most of which seeming to be through a great gateway, affording admission into a central court yard; a public square, with a statue in the middle, and another statue in a neighbouring street. We met priests in three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee-breeches; also soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants and children, lattering over the pavements in wooden shoes.

It makes a great impression of outlandishness to see the signs over the shop-doors in a foreign tongue. If the cold had not been such as to dull my sense of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I should have taken in a set of new impressions, and enjoyed them very much. As it was, I cared little for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy the Cathedral of Amiens, which has many features unlike those of English cathedrals.

It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the latter give is of magnitude and mass: this French cathedral strikes one as lofty. The exterior is venerable, though but little time-worn by the action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; and the interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any that we had seen, and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it being of such an airy height, and with no screen between the chancel and nave, as in all the English cathedrals. We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of the side aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were hung at some of the shrines, or placed under glass. In every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak, through the open work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Saviour, the Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where the High Altar stands. There is not much painted glass ; one or two veryrich and beautiful rose-windows, however, that looked antique; and the great eastern window, which, I think, is modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of work, since the structure was erected, and is footworn by the successive generations, though still in excellent repair. I saw one of the small, square stones in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there are a thousand older ones. It was gratifying to find the cathedral in such good condition, without any traces of recent repair; and it is perhaps a mark of difference between French and English character, that the Revolution in the former country, though all religious worship disappeared before it, does not seem to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical monuments, as the Reformation and the reign of Puritanism in the latter. I did not see a mutilated shrine, or even a broken-nosed image in the whole cathedral. But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at them, were symptoms of sincerer religious faith than the French were capable of. These last did not care enough about their Saviour to beat down his crucified image; and they preserved the works of sacred art, for the sake only of what beauty there was in them.

While we were in the cathedral, we saw several persons kneeling at their devotions on the steps of the chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his fingers in the holy water at the entrance: -- by-the-bye, I looked into the stone basin that held it, and saw it full of ice. Could not all that sanctity at least keep it thawed? Priests jolly, fat, mean-looking fellows, in white robes went hither and thither, but did not interrupt or accost us.

There were other peculiarities, which I suppose I shall see more of in my visits to other churches, but now we were all glad to make our stay as brief as possible, the atmosphere of the cathedral being so bleak, and its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our feet. We returned to the hotel, and the chambermaid brought me a book, in which she asked me to inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, and the authorisation under which I travelled. After the freedom of an English hotel, so much greater than even that of an American one, where they make you disclose your name, this is not so pleasant. We left Amiens at half-past one; and I can tell as little of the country between that place and Paris, as between Boulogne and Amiens. The windows of our railway carriage were already frosted with French breath when we got into it, and the ice grew thicker and thicker continually. I tried, at various times, to rub a peep-hole through, as before; but the ice immediately shot its crystallised tracery over it again; and, indeed, there was little or nothing to make it worth while to look out, so bleak was the scene. Now and then a chateau, too far off for its characteristics to be discerned; now and then a church, with a tall grey tower, and a little peak a-top; here and there a village or a town, which we could not well see. At sunset there was just that clear, cold, wintry sky which I remember so well in America, but have never seen in England.

At five we reached Paris, and were suffered to take a carriage to the Hotel de Louvre, without any examination of the little luggage we had with us. Arriving, we took a suite of apartments, and the waiter immediately lighted a wax candle in each separate room.

We might have dined at the table-d'hote, but preferred the restaurant connected with and within the hotel. All the dishes were very delicate, and a vast change from the simple English system, with its joints, shoulders, beef steaks, and chops; but I doubt whether English cookery, for the very reason that it is so gross, is not better for men's moral and spiritual nature than French. In the former case, you know that you are gratifying your coarse animal needs and propensities, and are duly ashamed of it; but, in dealing wifh these French delicacies, you delude yourself into the idea that you are cultivating your taste while satisfying your appetite. This last, however, it requires a good deal of perseverance to accomplish.

In the cathedral at Amiens there were printed lists of acts of devotion posted on the columns, such as prayers at the shrines of certain saints, whereby plenary indulgences might be gained. It is to be observed, however, that all these external forms were necessarily accompanied with true penitence and religious devotion.