Beni.'"

In one of his letters written at this period, referring to his design of
going home, he says:--

"I shall not have been absent seven years till the 5th of July next,
and I scorn to touch Yankee soil sooner than that.... As regards
going home I alternate between a longing and a dread."

Returning to London from the Continent, in April, I found this letter,
written from Bath, awaiting my arrival:--

"You are welcome back. I really began to fear that you had been
assassinated among the Apennines or killed in that outbreak at Rome.
I have taken passages for all of us in the steamer which sails the
16th of June. Your berths are Nos. 19 and 20. I engaged them with
the understanding that you might go earlier or later, if you chose;
but I would advise you to go on the 16th; in the first place,
because the state-rooms for our party are the most eligible in the
ship; secondly, because we shall otherwise mutually lose the
pleasure of each other's company. Besides, I consider it my duty,
towards Ticknor and towards Boston, and America at large, to take
you into custody and bring you home; for I know you will never come
except upon compulsion. Let me know at once whether I am to use
force.

"The book (The Marble Faun) has done better than I thought it
would; for you will have discovered, by this time, that it is an
audacious attempt to impose a tissue of absurdities upon the public
by the mere art of style of narrative. I hardly hoped that it would