"I made up a huge package the other day, consisting of seven closely
written volumes of journal, kept by me since my arrival in England,
and filled with sketches of places and men and manners, many of
which would doubtless be very delightful to the public. I think I
shall seal them up, with directions in my will to have them opened
and published a century hence; and your firm shall have the refusal
of them then.

"Remember me to everybody, for I love all my friends at least as
well as ever."

Released from the cares of office, and having nothing to distract his
attention, his life on the Continent opened full of delightful
excitement. His pecuniary situation was such as to enable him to live
very comfortably in a country where, at that time, prices were moderate.

In a letter dated from a villa near Florence on the 3d of September,
1858, he thus describes in a charming manner his way of life in Italy:--

"I am afraid I have stayed away too long, and am forgotten by
everybody. You have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, I
suppose, in that chamber over the shop, where you once took me to
smoke a cigar, and have crossed my name out of your list of authors,
without so much as asking whether I am dead or alive. But I like it
well enough, nevertheless. It is pleasant to feel at last that I am
really away from America,--a satisfaction that I never enjoyed as
long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the
quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was continually
filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and