Italy and England, where Mary Howitt's translations had assured him a
welcome. Ten years later he revisited England as the guest of Dickens
at Gadshill.

The failure of an epic, 'Ahasuerus' (1847), and of a novel, 'The Two
Baronesses' (1849), made him turn with more interest to wonder tales and
fairy dramas, which won a considerable success; and when the political
troubles of 1848 directed his wanderings toward Sweden, he made from
them 'I Sverrig' (In Sweden: 1849), his most exquisite book of travels.
As Europe grew peaceful again he resumed his indefatigable wanderings,
visiting Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Bohemia, and
England; printing between 1852 and 1862 nine little volumes of stories,
the mediocre but successful 'In Spain' (1860), and his last novel, 'To
Be or Not To Be' (1857), which reflects the religious speculations of
his later years.

He was now in comparatively easy circumstances, and passed the last
fifteen years of his life unharassed by criticism, and surrounded with
the 'honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,' that should accompany
old age. It was not until 1866 that he made himself a home; and even at
sixty-one he said the idea 'positively frightened him--he knew he should
run away from it as soon as ever the first warm sunbeam struck him, like
any other bird of passage.'

In 1869 he celebrated his literary jubilee. In 1872 he finished his last
'Stories.' That year he met with an accident in Innsbruck from which he
never recovered. Kind friends eased his invalid years; and so general
was the grief at his illness that the children of the United States
collected a sum of money for his supposed necessities, which at his
request took the form of books for his library. A few months later,