made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its grate of bituminous coal,
was English too, as was also the chill temperature that sometimes called
for a fire at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often,
between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at
noonday. I am not aware of omitting anything important in the above
descriptive inventory, unless it be some book-shelves filled with octavo
volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed
with dusty communications from former Secretaries of State, and other
official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of
the Consulate, which I might have done my successor a favor by flinging
into the coal-grate. Yes; there was one other article demanding
prominent notice: the consular copy of the New Testament, bound in black
morocco, and greasy, I fear, with a daily succession of perjured kisses;
at least, I can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths, administered
by me between two breaths, to all sorts of people and on all manner of
worldly business, were reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul's
peril.

Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in which I spent
wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my
existence. At first, to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it
as not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of
so great and prosperous a country as the United States then were; and I
should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier
apartments, except for the prudent consideration that my government would
have left me thus to support its dignity at my own personal expense.
Besides, a long line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest is
now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found the locality good
enough for them; it might certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an
individual so little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. So I