One night we stopped at a place called Kettle River. It was very picturesque. Over the rushing stream the high rocky banks actually overhung the water. I got into a birch canoe with my wife, and two Indian boys paddled us, while others made a great fire on the cliff above, which illuminated the scene. Other Indian youths jumped into the water and swam about and skylarked, whooping wildly. It reminded me strangely of the Blue Grotto of Capri, where our boatmen jumped in and swam in a sulphur-azure glow, only that this was red in the firelight.

Our whisky ran short—it always does on all such excursions—and our drivers in consequence became very "short" also, or rather unruly. But bon chemin, mal chemin, we went on, and the ladies, as I had predicted, pulled through merrily.

One day, at a halt, I found, with the ladies, in the woods by a stream, a pretty sight. It was a wigwam, which was very open, and which had been made to look like a bower with green boughs. When I was in the artillery I was the only person who ever thus adorned our tent in Indian style. It is very pleasant on a warm day, and looks artistic. In the wigwam sat a pretty Indian woman with a babe. The ladies were, of course, at once deeply interested, but the Indian could not speak English. One of the ladies had a common Japanese fan, with the picture of a grotesque god, and I at once saw my way to interest our hostess.

I once read in the journal of a missionary's wife in Canada that she had a curious Malay or Cingalese dagger, with a curved blade and wooden sheath, while on the handle was the figure of an idol. One day she showed this to an Indian, and the next day he came with five more, and these again with fifteen, till it seemed as if the whole country had gone wild over it. Very much alarmed at such heathenism, the lady locked it up and would show it no more. Ere she did so, she asked an old Indian how it was possible to make a scabbard of one piece of wood, with a hole in it to fit the blade. This man, who had been one of the most devoted admirers of the deity on the handle, saw no puzzle in this. He explained that the hole was burned in by heating the blade.

I showed the god on the fan to the Indian woman, and said, "Manitu—ktchee manitu" ("a god—a great god"). She saw at once that it was heathen, and her heart went out unto it with great delight. With a very few Chippeway words and many signs I explained to her that forty days' journey from us was the sea, and forty days beyond another country where the people had this manitou. I believe that the lady gave her the fan, and it may be that she worships it to this day. How absurd it is to try to force on such people Catholic or Protestant forms, which they do not understand and never will, while their souls take in with joy the poly-pantheistic developments of supernaturalism, and that which suits their lives. Like the little boy who thought he would like to have a Testament, but knew he wanted a squirt, the Indian, unable to rise to the grandeur of monotheistic trinitarianism, is delighted with goblins, elves, and sorcery. He can manage the squirt.

At Fond-du-Lac I became acquainted with a Mr. Duffy, a very genial and clever man, a son of a former governor of Rhode Island. He had an Indian wife and family, and was looked up to by the Indians as Kitchimokomon, "the white man." That he was a gentleman will appear from the following incident. There was one of our party who, to put it mildly, was not remarkable for refinement. A trader at Fond-du-Lac had a very remarkable carved Indian pipe, for which he asked me fifteen dollars. It certainly was rather a high price, so I offered ten. Immediately the man of whom I spoke laid down fifteen dollars and took the pipe. He was dans son droit, but the action was churlish. It seemed so to Duffy, who was standing by. After I had returned to Philadelphia, Mr. Duffy sent me a very handsome pipe for a present, which he assured me had been smoked at two grand councils. He was indeed a "white man."

There was an old Indian here whose name in Indian meant "He who changes his position while sitting," but white people called him Martin "for short." He was wont to smoke a very handsome pipe. One day, seeing him smoking a wretched affair rudely hewn, I asked him if he had not a better. He replied, "I had, but I sold it to the kcheemo-komon iqueh"—the long-knife woman (i.e., to a white lady). Inquiry proved that the "long-knife woman" was Miss Lottie Foster, a very beautiful and delicate young lady from Philadelphia, to whom such a barbaric term seemed strangely applied. As for me, because I always bought every stone pipe which I could get, the Indians called me Poaugun or Pipe. Among the Algonkin of the East in after-days I had a name which means he who seeks hidden things (i.e., mysteries).

We came to Duluth. There were in those days exactly six houses and twenty-six Indian wigwams. However, we were all accommodated somehow. Here there were grand conferences of the railroad kings with the authorities of Duluth and Superior City, which was a few miles distant, and as the Dulutherans outbid the Father Superiors, the terminus of the road was fixed at Duluth.

It was arranged that the ladies should remain at Duluth while we, the men, were to go through the woods to examine a situation a day's march distant. We had Indians to carry our luggage. Every man took a blanket and a cord, put his load into it, turned the ends over the cord, and then drew it up like a bag. They carried very easily from 150 to 250 lbs. weight for thirty miles a day over stock and stone, up and down steep banks or amid rotten crumbling trees and moss. Though a good walker, I could not keep up with them.

I had with me a very genial and agreeable man as walking companion. His name was Stewart, and he was mayor, chief physician, and filled half-a- dozen other leading capacities in St. Paul. Our fellow-travellers vanished in the forest. Mayor Stewart and I with one Indian carrier found ourselves at two o'clock very thirsty indeed. The view was beautiful enough. A hundred yards below us by the steep precipice rushed the St. Lawrence, but we could not get at it to drink.

Stewart threw himself on the grass in despair. "Yes," he cried, "we're lost in the wilderness, and I'm going to die of thirst. Remember me to my family." "I say," he suddenly cried, "ask that Injun the name of that river."

I asked of the Indian, "Wa go nin-iu?" ("How do you call that?") Thinking I wanted to know the name for a stream, he replied, "Sebe." This is the same as sipi in Missis-sippi.

"I knew it," groaned Stewart. "There is no such river as the Sebe laid down on the map. We're lost in an unknown region."

"It occurs to me," I said, "that this is a judgment on me. When I think of the number of times in my life when I have walked past bar-rooms and neglected to go in and take a drink, I must think that it is a retribution."

"And I say," replied Stewart, "that if you ever do get back to civilisation, you'll be the old —- toper that ever was."

When we came to the camp we found there by mere chance a large party of surveyors. As there were thirty or forty of us, it was resolved, as so many white men had never before been in that region, to constitute a township and elect a member to the Legislature, or Congress, or something—I forget what; but it appeared that it was legal, and it was actually done—I voting with the rest as a settler. I, too, am a Minnesot.

We railroad people formed one party and sat at our evening meal by ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the Indians a third table- d'hote. An open tin of oysters was before us, and somebody said they were not good. One only needs say so to ruin the character of an oyster—and too often of "a human bivalve," as the Indiana orator said. We were about to pitch it away, when I asked the attendant to give it to the Indians. It was gravely passed by them from man to man till it came to the last, who lifted it to his mouth and drank off the entire quart, oysters and all, as if it had been so much cider. Amazed at this, I asked what it meant, but the only explanation I could get was, "He like um oyster."

This was a charming excursion, all through the grene wode wilde, and I enjoyed it. I had Indian society, and learned Indian talk, and bathed in charming rushing waters, and saw enormous pine trees 300 feet high, and slept al fresco, and ate ad libitum. To this day its remembrance inspires in me a feeling of deep, true poetry.

I think it was at Duluth that one morning there was brought in an old silver cross which had just been found in an Indian grave on the margin of the lake, not very far away. I went there with some others. It was evidently the grave of some distinguished man who had been buried about a hundred years ago. There were the decayed remains of an old-fashioned gun, and thousands of small beads adhering, still in pattern, to the tibiae. I dug up myself—in fact they almost lay on the surface, the sand being blown away—several silver bangles, which at first looked exactly like birch-bark peelings, and, what I very much prized, two or three stone cylinders or tubes, about half an inch in diameter, with a hole through them. Antiquaries have been much puzzled over these, some thinking that they were musical instruments, others implements for gambling. My own theory always was that they were used for smoking tobacco, and as those which I found were actually stuffed full of dried semi-decayed "fine cut," I still hold to it. I also purchased from a boy a red stone pipe-head, which was found in the same grave. I should here say that the pipe which had been bought away from me by the man above mentioned had on it the carving of a reindeer, which rendered it to me alone of living men peculiarly valuable, since I have laboured hard, and subsequently set forth in my "Algonkin Legends" the theory that the Algonkin Indians went far to the North and there mingled with the Norsemen of Greenland and Labrador. The man who got the pipe promised to leave it to me when he died, but he departed from life and never kept his word. A frequent source of grief to me has been to see objects of great value, illustrating some point in archaeology, seized as "curiosities" by ignorant wealthy folk. The most detestable form of this folly is the buying of incunabula, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a book or a coin, merely because it is rare. Men never expatiate on rariora in literature or in china, or talk cookery and wines over-much, without showing themselves prigs. It is not any beauty in the thing, but the delightful sense of their own culture or wealth which they cultivate. When there is nothing in a thing but mere rarity and cost to commend it, it is absolutely worthless, as is the learning and connoisseurship thereupon dependent.

Business concluded, we took a steamboat, and were very sea-sick on Lake Superior for twenty-four hours. Then we went to the Isle Royale, and saw the mines, which had been worked even by the ancient Mexicans; also an immense mass of amethysts. The country here abounds in agates. At Marquette there was brought on board a single piece of pure virgin copper from the mine which weighed more than 4,000 pounds. There it was, I think, that we found our cars waiting, and returned in them to Philadelphia.

It was at this time that my brother Henry died, and his loss inflicted on me a terrible mental blow, which went far, subsequently, to bring about a great crisis in my health. My dear brother was the most remarkable illustration of the fact that there are men who, by no fault of their own, and who, despite the utmost honour or integrity, deep intelligence, good education, and varied talents, are overshadowed all their lives by sorrow, and meet ill-luck at every turn. He went at sixteen as employe into a Cuban importing house, where he learned Spanish. His principal failed, and thence he passed to a store in New York, where he worked far too hard for $600 a year. His successor, who did much less, was immediately paid $2,500 per annum. Finding that his employer was being secretly ruined by his partner, he warned the former, but only with the result of being severely reprimanded by the merchant and my father as a mischief-maker. After a while this merchant was absolutely ruined and bankrupted by his partner, as he himself declared to me, but, like many men, still kept his rancune against my poor brother. By this time the eyesight and health of Henry quite gave out for some time. Every effort which he made, whether to get employment, to become artist or writer, failed. He published two volumes of tales, sporting sketches, &c., with Lippincott, in Philadelphia, which are remarkable for originality. One of them was subsequently written out by another distinguished author in another form. I do not say it was after my brother's, for I have known another case in which two men, having heard a story from Barnum, both published it, ignorant that the other had done so. But I would declare, in justice to my brother, that he told this story, which I am sure the reader knows, quite as well as did the other.

He travelled a great deal, was eighteen months in Rome and its vicinity, visited Algeria, Egypt, and Cuba and the West, always spending so little money that my father expressed his amazement at it. I regret to say that in my youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father would never have missed it. The feeling that he could get no foothold in life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which followed him to the grave. His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without a trace of vulgarity, ever written in America. It had originally some such title as "Studios and Mountains," but the publisher, thinking that the miserable clap-trap title of "Americans in Rome" would create an impression that there was "gossip," and possibly scandal, in it, insisted on that. It was published in the weary panic of 1862 in the war, and fell dead from the press. Though he never really laughed, and was generally absolutely grave, my brother had an incredibly keen sense of fun, and in conversation could far outmaster or "walk over the head" of any humorist whom I ever met. He was very far, however, from showing off or being a professional wit. He was very fond, when talking with men who considered themselves clever, of making jests or puns in such a manner and in such an unaffected ordinary tone of voice that they took no note of the quodlibets. He enjoyed this much more than causing a laugh or being complimented. But taking his life through, he was simply unfortunate in everything, and his worst failures were when he made wisely directed energetic efforts to benefit himself or others. He rarely complained or grieved, having in him a deep fond of what I, for want of a better term, call Indian nature, or stoicism, which is common in Americans, and utterly incomprehensible to, or rarely found in, a European.

The death of my father left me a fifth of his property, which was afterwards somewhat augmented by a fourth share of my poor brother's portion. For one year I drew no money from the inheritance, but went on living as before on my earnings, so that my wife remarked it really took me a year to realise that I had any money. After some months I bought a house in Locust Street, just opposite to where my father had lived, and in this house I remained six months previously to going to Europe in 1869. We had coloured servants, and I never in all my life, before or since, lived so well as during this time. The house was well furnished; there was even the great luxury of no piano, which is a great condition of happiness.

This year I was fearfully busy. As I had taken the dramatic criticism in hand, for which alone we had always employed a man, I went during twelve months 140 times to the opera, and every evening to several theatres, et cetera. Once I was caught beautifully. There had been an opera bouffe, the "Grande Duchesse" or something, running for two or three weeks, and I had written a criticism on it. This was laid over by "press of matter," but as the same play was announced for the next night with the same performers, we published the critique. But it so chanced that the opera by some accident was not played! The Evening Bulletin, my old paper, rallied me keenly on this blunder, and I felt badly. John Forney, jun., however, said it was mere rubbish of no consequence. He was such an arrant Bohemian and hardened son of the press, that he regarded it rather as a joke and a feather in our caps, indicating that we were a bounding lot, and not tied down to close observances. Truly this is a very fine spirit of freedom, but it may be carried too far, as I think it was by a friend of mine, who had but one principle in life, and that was never to write his newspaper correspondence in the place from which it was dated. It came to pass that about three weeks after this retribution overtook the Bulletin, for it also published a review of an opera which was not sung, but I meanly passed the occurrence by without comment. When a man hits you, it is far more generous, manly, and fraternal to hit him back a good blow than to degrade him by silent contempt.

The Presidential campaign between Grant and Johnson was beginning to warm up. Colonel Forney was in a cyclone of hard work between Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York, carrying on a thousand plots and finely or coarsely drawn intrigues, raising immense sums, speaking in public, and, not to put it too finely, buying or trading votes in a thousand tortuous or "mud-turtlesome and possum-like ways"—for non possumus was not in his Latin. Never shall I forget the disgust and indignation with which the great Republican champion entered the office one evening, and, flinging himself on a chair, declared that votes in New Jersey had gone up to sixty dollars a head! And I was forced to admit that sixty dollars for a Jerseyman did seem to be an exorbitant price. So he went forth on the war-path with fresh paint and a sharp tomahawk.

It often happened to me in his absence to have very curious and critical decisions in my power. One of these is the "reading in" or "reading out" of a man from his party. This is invariably done by a leading political newspaper. I remember, for instance, a man who had been very prominent in politics, and gone over to the Democrats, imploring me to readmit him to the fold; but, as I regarded him as a mere office-hunter, I refused to do it. Excommunicatus sit!

There was a very distinguished and able man in a very high position. To him I had once addressed a letter begging a favour which would have been nothing at all to grant, but which was of great importance to me, and he had taken no notice of it. It came to pass that we had in our hands to publish certain very damaging charges against this great man. He found it out, and, humiliated, I may say agonised with shame and fear, he called with a friend, begging that the imputations might not be published. I believe from my soul that if I had not been so badly treated by him I should have refused his request, but, as it was, I agreed to withdraw the charges. It was the very best course, as I afterwards found. I am happy to say that, in after years, and in other lands, he showed himself very grateful to me. I am by nature as vindictive as an unconverted Indian, and as I am deeply convinced that it is vile and wicked, I fight vigorously against it. In my Illustrated News days in New York I used to keep an old German hymn pasted up before me in the sanctum to remind me not to be revengeful. Out of all such battling of opposing principles come good results. I feel this in another form in the warring within me of superstitious feelings and scientific convictions.

It became apparent that on Pennsylvania depended the election of President. The State had only been prevented from turning Copperhead- Democrat—which was the same as seceding—by the incredible exertions of the Union League, led by George H. Boker, and the untiring aid of Colonel Forney. But even now it was very uncertain, and in fact the election—on which the very existence of the Union virtually depended—was turned by only a few hundred votes; and, as Colonel Forney and George H. Boker admitted, it would have been lost but for what I am going to narrate.

There were many thousand Republican Clubs all through the State, but they had no one established official organ or newspaper. This is of vast importance, because such an organ is sent to doubtful voters in large numbers, and gives the keynote or clue for thousands of speeches and to men stumping or arguing. It occurred to me early to make the Weekly Press this organ. I employed a young man to go to the League and copy all the names and addresses of all the thousands of Republican clubs in the State. Then I had the paper properly endorsed by the League, and sent a copy to every club at cost price or for nothing. This proved to be a tremendous success. It cost us money, but Colonel Forney never cared for that, and he greatly admired the coup. I made the politics hot, to suit country customers. I found the gun and Colonel Forney the powder and ball, and between us we made a hit.

One day Frank Wells, of the Bulletin (very active indeed in the Union League), met me and asked if I, since I had lived in New York, could tell them anything as to what kind of a man George Francis Train really was. "He has come over all at once," he said, "from the Democratic party, and wishes to stump Pennsylvania, if we will pay him his expenses." I replied—

"I know Train personally, and understand him better than most men. He is really a very able speaker for a popular American audience, and will be of immense service if rightly managed. But you must get some steady, sensible man to go with him and keep him in hand and regulate expenses, &c."

It was done. After the election I conversed with the one who had been the bear-leader, and he said—

"It was an immense success. Train made thousands of votes, and was a most effective speaker. His mania for speaking was incredible. One day, after addressing two or three audiences at different towns, we stopped at another to dine. While waiting for the soup, I heard a voice as of a public speaker, and looking out, saw Train standing on a load of hay, addressing a thousand admiring auditors."

There are always many men who claim to have carried every Presidential election—the late Mr. Guiteau was one of these geniuses—but it is also true that there are many who would by not working have produced very great changes. Forney was a mighty wire-puller, if not exactly before the Lord, at least before the elections, and he opined that I had secured the success. There were certainly other men—e.g., Peacock, who influenced as many votes as the Weekly Press, and George Francis Train—without whose aid Pennsylvania and Grant's election would have been lost, but it is something to have been one of the few who did it.

When General Grant came in, he resolved to have nothing to do with "corrupt old politicians," even though they had done him the greatest service. So he took up with a lot of doubly corrupt young ones, who were only inferior to the veterans in ability. Colonel Forney was snubbed cruelly, in order to rob him. Whatever he had done wrongly, he had done his work rightly, and if Grant intended to throw his politicians overboard, he should have informed them of it before availing himself of their services. His conduct was like that of the old lady who got a man to saw three cords of wood for her, and then refused to pay him because he had been divorced.

I had never in my life asked for an office from anybody. Mr. Charles A. Dana once said that the work I did for the Republican party on Vanity Fair alone was worth a foreign mission, and that was a mere trifle to what I did with the Continental Magazine, my pamphlet, &c. When Grant was President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth $1,000 (200 pounds) might be given to a poor Episcopal clergyman, but a man accustomed to consular work, who spoke French, and who had been secretary to two commodores. It was for a small French town. It was supported by Forney and George H. Boker; but it was refused because I was "in Forney's set," and the consulate was given to a Western man who did not know French.

If John Forney, instead of using all his immense influence for Grant, had opposed him tooth and nail, he could not have been treated with more scornful neglect. The pretence for this was that Forney had defaulted $40,000! I know every detail of the story, and it is this:—While Forney was in Europe, an agent to whom he had confided his affairs did take money to that amount. As soon as Forney learned this, he promptly raised $40,000 by mortgage on his property, and repaid the deficit. Even his enemy Simon Cameron declared he did not believe the story, and the engine of his revenge was always run by "one hundred Injun power."

I had "met" Grant several times, when one day in London I was introduced to him again. He said that he was very happy to make my acquaintance. I replied, "General Grant, I have had the pleasure of being introduced to you six times already, and I hope for many happy renewals of it." A week or two after, this appeared in Punch, adapted to a professor and a duchess.

When the Sanitary Fair was held in Philadelphia in 1863, a lady in New York wrote to Garibaldi, begging him for some personal souvenir to be given to the charity. Garibaldi replied by actually sending the dagger which he had carried in every engagement, expressing in a letter a hope that it might pass to General Grant. But a warm partisan of McClellan so arranged it that there should be an election for the dagger between the partisans of Grant and McClellan, every one voting to pay a dollar to the Fair. For a long time the McClellanites were in a majority, but at the last hour Miss Anna M. Lea, now Mrs. Lea Merritt, very cleverly brought down a party of friends, who voted for Grant, secured the dagger for him, and so carried out the wish of Garibaldi. Long after an amusing incident occurred relative to this. In conversation in London with Mrs. Grant, I asked her if the dagger had been received. She replied, "Oh, yes," and then added naively, "but wasn't it really alt a humbug?"

The death of my father and brother within a year, the sudden change in my fortunes, the Presidential campaign, and, above all, the working hard seven days in the week, had been too much for me. I began to find, little by little, that I could not execute half the work to which I was accustomed. Colonel Forney was very kind indeed, and never said a word. But I began to apprehend that a break-down in my health was impending. I needed change of scene, and so resolved, finding, after due consideration, that I had enough to live on, to go abroad for a long rest. It proved to be a very wise resolve. So I rented my house, packed my trunks, and departed, to be gone "for a year or two."

I would say, in concluding this chapter, that Colonel John Forney was universally credited, with perfect justice, as having carried Grant's election. When Grant was about to deliver his inaugural speech, a stranger who stood by me, looking at the immense expectant crowd, remarked to a friend, "This is a proud day for John Forney!" "Yes," replied the other, "the Dead Duck has elected Grant." But Forney cheerfully and generously declared that it was the Weekly Press which had carried Pennsylvania, and that I had managed it entirely alone. All these things were known to thousands at the time, but we lived in such excitement that we made but little account thereof. However, there are men of good repute still living who will amply confirm all that I have said of my work on the Continental Magazine; and that Abraham Lincoln himself did actually credit me with this is proved by the following incident. Because I had so earnestly advocated Emancipation as a war measure at a time when even the most fiery and advanced Abolition papers, such as the Tribune, were holding back and shouting pas trop de zele—and as it proved wisely, by advocating it publicly—merely as a war measure—the President, at the request of George H. Boker, actually signed for me fifty duplicate very handsome copies of the Proclamation of Emancipation on parchment paper, to every one of which Mr. Seward also added his signature. One of these is now hanging up in the British Museum as my gift. I perfectly understood and knew at the time, as did all concerned, that this was a recognition, and a very graceful and appropriate one, of what I had done for Emancipation—Harvard having A.M.'d me for the same. The copies I presented to the Sanitary Fair to be sold for its benefit, but there was not much demand for them; what were left over I divided with George Boker.



VII. EUROPE REVISITED. 1869-1870.

Voyage on the Pereire—General Washburne—I am offered a command in another French Revolution—Paris—J. Meredith Read and Prevost Paradol—My health—Spa—J. C. Hotten—Octave Delepierre—Heidelberg—Dresden—Julian Hawthorne and G. Lathrop—Verona—Venice—Rome—W. W. Story—Florence—Lorimer Graham—"Breitmann" in the Royal Family—Tuscany.

We sailed on the famed Pereire from New York to Brest in May, 1869. We had not left port before a droll incident occurred. On the table in the smoking-room lay a copy of the "Ballads of Hans Breitmann." A fellow- passenger asked me, "Is that your book?" I innocently replied, "Yes." "Excuse me, sir," cried another, "it is mine." "I beg your pardon," I replied, "but it is really mine." "Sir, I bought it." "I don't care if you did," I replied; "it is mine—for I wrote it." There was a roar of laughter, and we all became acquainted at once.

General Washburne was among the passengers. He had been appointed Minister to France and was going to Paris, where he subsequently distinguished himself during the siege by literally taking the place of seven foreign Ministers who had left, and kindly caring for all their proteges. It never occurred to the old frontiersman to leave a place or his duties because fighting was going on. I had a fine twelve-feet blue Indian blanket, which I had bought somewhere beyond Leavenworth of a trader. When sitting on deck wrapped in it, the General would finger a fold lovingly, and say, "Ah! the Indians always have good blankets!"

We arrived in Brest, and Mrs. Leland, who had never before been in Europe, was much pleased at her first sight, early in the morning, of a French city; the nuns, soldiers, peasants, and all, as seen from our window, were indeed very picturesque. We left that day by railway for Paris, and on the road a rather remarkable incident occurred. There was seated opposite to us a not very amiable-looking man of thirty, who might be of the superior class of mechanics, and who evidently regarded us with an evil eye, either because we were suspected Anglais or aristocrats. I resolved that he should become amicable. Ill-tempered though he might be, he was still polite, for at every stopping-place he got out to smoke, and extinguished his cigar ere he re-entered. I said to him, "Madame begs that you will not inconvenience yourself so much—pray continue to smoke in here." This melted him, as it would any Frenchman. Seeing that he was reading the Rappel, I conversed "liberally." I told him that I had been captain of barricades in Forty-eight, and described in full the taking of the Tuileries. His blood was fired, and he confided to me all the details of a grand plot for a Revolution which he was going up to Paris to attend to, and offered me a prominent place among the conspirators, assuring me that I should have a glorious opportunity to fight again at the barricades! I was appalled at his want of discretion, but said nothing. Sure enough, there came the emeute of the plebiscite, as he had predicted, but it was suppressed. George Boker wrote to me: "When I heard of a revolution in Paris, I knew at once that you must have arrived and had got to work." And when I told him that I knew of it in advance, and had had a situation offered me as leader, he dryly replied, "Oh, I suppose so—as a matter of course." It was certainly a strange coincidence that I left Paris in Forty-eight as a Revolutionary suspect, and re-entered it in 1870 in very nearly the same capacity.

We found agreeable lodgings at the Rond Point of the Champs Elysees. The day after our arrival I determined to arrange the terms of living with our landlord. He and his wife had the reputation of being fearful screws in their "items." So he, thinking I was a newly arrived and perfectly ignorant American, began to draw the toils, and enumerate so much for the rooms, so much for every towel, so much, I believe, for salt and every spoon and fork. I asked him how much he would charge for everything in the lump. He replied, "Mais, Monsieur, nous ne faisons pas jamais comme cela a Paris." Out of all patience, I burst out into vernacular: "Sacre nom de Dieu et mille tonnerres, vieux galopin! you dare to tell me, a vieux carabin du Quartier Latin, that you cannot make arrangements! Et depuisse-quand, s'il vous plait?" {372} He stared at me in blank amazement, and then said with a smile: "Tiens! Monsieur est donc de nous!" "That I am," I replied, and we at once made a satisfactory compromise.

We had pleasant friends, and saw the sights and shopped; but I began to feel in Paris for the first time that the dreaded break-down or collapse which I had long apprehended was coming over me. There was a very clever surgeon and physician named Laborde, who was called Nelaton's right-hand man. I met him several times, and he observed to a mutual friend that I was evidently suffering seriously from threatening nervous symptoms, and that he would like to attend me. He did so, and gave me daily a teaspoonful of bromide of potassium. This gave me sleep and appetite; but, after some weeks or months, the result was a settled, mild melancholy and tendency to rest. In fact, it was nearly eighteen months before I recovered so that I could write or work, and live as of old.

I had inherited from both parents, and suffered all my life fearfully at intervals, from brachycephalic or dorsal neuralgia. Dr. Laborde made short work of this by giving me appallingly strong doses of tincture of aconite and sulphate of quinine. Chemists have often been amazed at the prescription. But in due time the trouble quite disappeared, and I now, laus Deo! very rarely ever have a touch of it. As many persons suffer terribly from this disorder, which is an aching in the back of the head and neck accompanied by "sick headache," I give the ingredients of the cure; the proper quantity must be determined by the physician. {373}

We dined once with Mr. Washburne, who during dinner showed his extreme goodness of heart in a very characteristic manner. Some foolish American had during the emeute—in which I was to have been a leader, had I so willed—got himself into trouble, not by fighting, but through mere prying Yankee "curiosity" and mingling with the crowd. Such people really deserve to be shot more than any others, for they get in the way and spoil good fighting. He was deservedly arrested, and sent for his Minister, who, learning it, at once arose, drove to the prefecture, and delivered his inquisitive compatriot. On another occasion we were the guests of J. Meredith Read, then our Minister to Athens, where we met Prevost Paradol. But at this time there suddenly came over me a distaste for operas, theatres, dinners, society—in short, of crowds, gaslight, and gaiety in any form, from which I have never since quite recovered. I had for years been fearfully overdoing it all in America, and now I was in the reaction, and longed for rest. I was in that state when one could truly say that life would be tolerable but for its amusements. It is usual for most people to insist in such cases that what the sufferer needs is "excitement" and "distraction of the mind," change of scene or gaiety, when in reality the patient should be most carefully trained to repose, which is not always easily done, for so very little attention has been paid to this great truth, that even medical science as yet can do very little towards calming nervous disorders. In most cases the trouble lies in the presence, or unthinking heedless influence, of other people; and, secondly, in the absence of interesting minor occupations or arts, such as keep the mind busy, yet not over-excited or too deeply absorbed. An important element in such cases is to interest deeply the patient in himself as a vicious subject to be subdued by his own exertions. No one who has never had the gout severely can form any conception of the terribly arrogant irritability which accompanies it. I say arrogant, because it is independent of any voluntary action of the mind. I have often felt it raging in me, and laughed at it, as if it were a chained wild beast, and conversed with perfect serenity. Unfortunately, even our dearest friends, generally women, cannot, to save their very lives and souls, refrain from having frequent piquant scenes with such tempting subjects; while, on the other hand, the subjects are often led by mere vanity into exhibiting themselves as something peculiar. Altogether, I believe that where there is no deeply seated hereditary or congenital defect, or no displacement or injury from violence or disease, there is always a cure to be hoped for, or at least possible; but this cure depends in many cases so very much upon the wisdom and patience of friends and physicians, that it is only remarkable that we find so many recoveries as we do. Where the patient and friends are all really persons of superior intelligence, almost miraculous cures may be effected. But unfortunately, if it be not born in us, it requires a great deal of genius to acquire properly the real dolce far niente.

From Paris we went to Spa in the Ardennes. In this very beautiful place, in a picturesque land of legends, I felt calmer and more relieved. I think it was there that for the first time I got an inkling that my name was becoming known in Europe. There was a beautiful young English lady whom I occasionally met in an artist's studio, who one day asked me with some interest whom the Leland could be of whom one heard sometimes—"he writes books, I think." I told her that I had a brother who had written two or three clever works, and she agreed with me that he must be the man; still she inclined to think that the name was not Henry, but Charles.

Mr. Nicolas Trubner, whom I had not seen since 1856, came with his wife and daughter to Spa, and this was the beginning of a great intimacy which lasted to his death. Which meeting reminds me of something amusing. I had written the first third of "Breitmann as a Politician," which J. "Camden" Hotten had republished, promising the public to give them the rest before long. This I prevented by copyrighting the two remaining thirds in England! Being very angry at this, Hotten accused me in print of having written this conclusion expressly to disappoint and injure him! In fact, he really seemed to think that Mr. Trubner and I were only a pair of foreign rogues, bound together to wrong Mr. J. C. Hotten out of his higher rights in "Breitmann." I wrote a pamphlet in which I said this and some other things very plainly. Mr. Trubner showed this to his lawyer, who was of the opinion that it could not be published because it bore on libel, though there was nothing in it worse than what I have here said. However, Mr. Trubner had it privately printed, and took great joy, solace, and comfort for a very long time in reading it to his friends after dinner, or on other occasions, and as he had many, it got pretty well about London. I may here very truly remark that Mr. Hotten, in the public controversy which he had with Mr. Trubner on the subject of my "Ballads," displayed an effrontery absolutely without parallel in modern times, apropos of which Punch remarked—

"The name of Curll will never be forgotten, And neither will be thine, John Camden Hotten."

From Spa we went to Brussels, where I remember to have seen many times at work in the gallery the famous artist without arms who painted with his toes. What was quite a remarkable was the excellence of his copies from Rembrandt. Nature succeeded in his case in "heaping voonders oopen voonders," as Tom Hood says in his "Rhine." I became well acquainted with Tom Hood the younger in after years, and to this day I contribute something every year to Tom Hood's Annual. At Brussels we stayed at a charming old hotel which had galleries one above the other round the courtyard, exactly like those of the White Hart Inn immortalised in "Pickwick." There was in Philadelphia a perfect specimen of such an inn, which has of late years been rebuilt as the Bingham House. While in Spa I studied Walloon.

From Brussels to Ghent, which I found much modernised from what it had been in 1847, when it was still exactly as in the Middle Age, but fearfully decayed, and, like Ferrara, literary with grass-grown streets. Und noch weiter—to Ostend, where for three weeks I took lessons in Flemish or Dutch from a young professor, reading "Vondel" and "Bilderdijk," who, if not in the world of letters known, deserves to be. I had no dictionary all this time, and the teacher marvelled that I always knew the meaning of the words, which will not seem marvellous to any one who understands German and has studied Anglo-Saxon and read "Middle or Early English." Then back to Spa to meet Mr. and Mrs. Trubner and her father Octave Delepierre, who was a great scholar in rariora, curiosa, and old French, and facile princeps the greatest expert in Macaronic poetry who ever wrote. May I here venture to mention that he always declared that my later poem of "Breitmann and the Pope" was the best Macaronic poem which he had ever read? His reason for this was that it was the most reckless and heedless or extravagant combination of Latin and modern languages known to him. I had, however, been much indebted to Mr. Oscar Browning for revising it. And so the truth, which long in darkness lay, now comes full clearly to the light of day.

Thence to Liege, Amsterdam, the Hague, Haarlem, and Leyden, visiting all the great galleries and many private collections. At Amsterdam we saw the last grand kermess or annual fair ever held there. It was a Dutch carnival, so wild and extravagant that few can comprehend now to what extremes "spreeing" can be carried. The Dutch, like the Swedes, have or had the strange habit of bottling up their hilarity and letting it out on stated occasions in uproarious frolics. I saw carmagnoles in which men and women, seized by a wild impulse, whirled along the street in a frantic dance to any chance music, compelling every bystander to join. I heard of a Prince from Capua, who, having been thus carmagnoled, returned home in rags.

In Leyden I visited the Archaeological Museum, where I by chance became acquainted with the chief or director, who was then engaged in rearranging his collections, and who, without knowing my name, kindly expressed the wish that I would remain a week to aid him in preparing the catalogue. As there are few works on prehistoric relics which I do not know, and as I had for many years studied with zeal innumerable collections of the kind, I venture to believe that his faith in my knowledge was not quite misplaced. Even as I write I have just received the Catalogue of Prehistoric Works in Eastern America, by Cyrus Thomas—a work of very great importance.

Thence we went to Cologne, where it was marvellous to find the Cathedral completed, in spite of the ancient legend which asserts that though the devil had furnished its design he had laid a curse upon it, declaring that it should never be finished. Thence up the Rhine by castles grey and smiling towns, recalling my old foot-journey along its banks; and so on to Heidelberg, where I stayed a month at the Black Eagle. Herr Lehr was still there. He had grown older. His son was taking dancing lessons of Herr Zimmer, who had taught me to waltz twenty years before. One day I took my watch to a shop to be repaired, when the proprietor declared that he had mended it once before in 1847, and showed me the private mark which he put on it at the time.

There were several American students, who received me very kindly. I remember among them Wright, Manly, and Overton. When I sat among them smoking and drinking beer, and mingling German student words with English, it seemed as if the past twenty years were all a dream, and that I was a Bursch again. Overton had the reputation of being par eminence the man of men in all Heidelberg, who could take off a full quart at one pull without stopping to take breath—a feat which I had far outdone at Munich, in my youth, with the horn, and which I again accomplished at Heidelberg "without the foam," Overton himself, who was a very noble young fellow, applauding the feat most loudly. But I have since then often done it with Bass or Alsopp, which is much harder. I need not say that the "Breitmann Ballads," which had recently got among the Anglo-American students, and were by them greatly admired, did much to render me popular.

I found or made many friends in Heidelberg. One night we were invited to a supper, and learned afterwards that the two children of our host, having heard that we were Americans, had peeped at us through the keyhole and expressed great disappointment at not finding us black.

In November we went to Dresden. We were so fortunate as to obtain excellent rooms and board with a Herr and Madame Rohn, a well-to-do couple, who, I am sure, took boarders far more for the sake of company than for gain. Herr Rohn had graduated at Leipzig, but having spent most of his life in Vienna, was a man of exuberant jollity—a man of gold and a gentleman, even as his wife was a truly gentle lady. As I am very tall, and detest German small beds, I complained of mine, and Herr Rohn said he had another, of which I could not complain. And I certainly could not, for when it came I found it was at least eight feet in length. It seems that they had once had for a boarder a German baron who was more than seven feet high, and had had this curiosity constructed; and Herr Rohn roared with laughter as I gazed on it, and asked if I would have it lengthened.

We remained in Dresden till February, and found many friends, among whom there was much pleasant homelike hospitality. Among others were Julian Hawthorne and sisters, and George Parsons Lathrop. They were young fellows then, and not so well known as they have since become, but it was evident enough that they had good work in them. They often came to see me, and were very kind in many ways. I took lessons in porcelain-painting, which art I kept up for many years, and was, of course, assiduous in visiting the galleries, Green Vault, and all works of art. I became well acquainted with Passavant, the director. I was getting better, but was still far from being as mentally vigorous as I had been. I now attribute this to the enormous daily dose of bromide which I continued to take, probably mistaking its influence for the original nervous exhaustion itself. It was not indeed till I got to England, and substituted lupulin in the form of hops—that is to say, pale ale or "bitter"—in generous doses, that I quite recovered.

So we passed on to Prague, which city, like everything Czech, always had a strange fascination for me. There I met a certain Mr. Vojtech Napristek (or Adalbert Thimble), who had once edited in the United States a Bohemian newspaper with which I had exchanged, and with whom I had corresponded, but whom I had never before seen. He had established in Prague, on American lines, a Ladies' Club of two hundred, which we visited, and was, I believe, owing to an inheritance, now a prosperous man. Though I am not a Thimble, it also befell me, in later years, to found and preside over a Ladies' Art Club of two hundred souls. At that time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one imagined that a time would come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect.

So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but one Riegelhaube, a curious head-dress or chignon-cover of silver thread, once very common. Even the old Bavarian dialect seemed to have almost vanished, and I was glad to hear it from our porter. Many old landmarks still existed, but King Louis no longer ran about the streets—I nearly ran against him once; people no longer were obliged by law to remove cigars or pipes from their mouths when passing a sentry-box. Lola Montez had vanished. Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, and saw the church described by Heine in his Reisebilder, and came to Verona, the Bern of the Heldenbuch. "Ich will gen Bern ausreiten, sprach Meister Hildebrand."

It was a happy thought of the Italians to put picturesque Verona down as the first stopping-place for Northern travellers, and I rather like Ruskin's idea of buying the town and keeping it intact as a piece of bric-a-brac. He might have proposed Rome while he was about it; "anything there can be had for money," says Juvenal.

When we arrived at the station I alone was left to encounter the fierce douaniers. One of them, inquisitive as to tobacco, when I told him I had none, laid his finger impressively on the mouthpiece of my pipe, remarking that where the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be far off. To which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if he would give me a little to fill my pipe. So all laughed. My wife entering at this instant, cried in amazement, "Why, Charles! where did you ever learn to talk Italian?" Which shows that there can be secrets even between married people; though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in confidence. It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured with Florentine.

There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity-shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carvings from some old scatola or marriage-casket. She asked a fabulous price for them, and I offered five francs. She scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a susceptible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged. So I went my way, but as I passed the place returning, the old lady came forth, and, graciously courtesying and smiling, held forth to me the earrings neatly wrapped in paper, and thanked me for the five francs! Which indicated to me that the good small folk of Italy had not materially changed since I had left the country.

We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had a room given to us which, had we wished to give a ball, would have left nothing to be desired. I counted in it twenty-seven chairs and seven tables, all at such a distance from one another that they seemed not to be on speaking terms. I do not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that room while I inhabited it—it was probably somewhere in Austria. I have spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidelberg. He was from Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. The next day after my arrival I found among the names of the departed, "Signore Wright-Kilkes, from Barre, Pennsylvania, America." This reminded me of the Anglo-American who was astonished at Rome at receiving invitations and circulars addressed to him as "Illustrissimo Varanti Solezer." It turned out that an assistant, reading aloud to the clerk the names from the trunks, had mistaken a very large "WARRANTED SOLE LEATHER" for the name of the owner.

And this on soles reminds me that there was a femme sole or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared to me one evening that she had never in all her life been so insulted as she was that day at a banker's; and the insult consisted in this, that she, although quite unknown to him, had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he had declined to do. I remarked that no banker who did business properly ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger.

"Sir," said the lady, "do I look like an impostor?"

"Madame," I replied, "I have seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. You do not appear to know much about such people."

"I am happy to say, sir," replied the lady with intense acidity, "that I do not." But she added triumphantly, "What do you say when I tell you that I had my cheque-book? How could I have possessed it if I had not a right to draw?"

"Any scamp," I replied, "can deposit a few pounds in a bank, buy a cheque- book, and then draw his money."

But the next day she came to me in radiant sneering triumph. She had found another banker, who was a gentleman, with a marked emphasis, who had cashed her cheque. How many people there are in this world whose definition of a gentleman is "one who does whatever pleases us!"

In Florence we went directly to the Hotel d'Europe in the Via Tuornabuoni, where my Indian blanket vanished even while entering the hotel, and surrounded only by the servants to whom the luggage had been confided. As the landlord manifested great disgust for me whenever I mentioned such a trifle, and as the porter and the rest declared that they would answer soul and body for one another's honesty, I had to grin and bear it. I really wonder sometimes that there are not more boarders, who, like Benvenuto Cellini, set fire to hotels or cut up the bedclothes before leaving them. That worthy, having been treated not so badly as I was at the Hotel d'Europe and at another in Florence, cut to pieces the sheets of his bed, galloped away hastily, and from the summit of a distant hill had the pleasure of seeing the landlord in a rage. Now people write to the Times, and "cut up" the whole concern. It all comes to the same thing.

In Florence I saw much of an old New York friend, the now late Lorimer Graham. When he died, Swinburne wrote a poem on him. He was a man of great culture and refined manner. There was something sympathetic in him which drew every one irresistibly into liking. It was his instinct to be kind and thoughtful to every one. He gave me letters to Swinburne, Lord Houghton, and others.

I made an acquaintance by chance in Florence whom I can never forget: for he was a character. One day while in the Uffizi Gallery engaged in studying the great Etruscan vase, now in the Etruscan Museum, a stranger standing by me said, "Does not this seem to you like a mysterious book written in forgotten characters? Is not a collection of such vases like a library?"

"On that hint I spake." "I see," I replied, "you refer to the so-called Etruscan Library which an Englishman has made, and which contains only vases and inscriptions in that now unknown tongue of Etruria. And indeed, when we turn over the pages of Inghirami, Gherard, and Gori, Gray, or Dennis, it does indeed really seem—But what do you really think the old Etruscan language truly was?"

"Look here, my friend," cried the stranger in broad Yankee, "I guess I'm barkin' up the wrong tree. I calculated to tell you something, but you're ahead of me."

We both laughed and became very good friends. He lived at our hotel, and had been twenty-five years in Italy, and knew every custode in every gallery, and could have every secret treasure unlocked. He was perfectly at home about town—would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, and was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it rained.

We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we saw there, my memory is confused literally with an embarras de richesses. The Ecumenical Council was being held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman, who possibly did not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was declared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things.

While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the sculptor, and his wife and daughter, Edith, for whom Thackeray wrote his most beautiful tale, and I at my humble distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome," which contained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war. At their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and many more whose names are known to all. It was there also that a lady of the Royal English household amused us very much one evening by narrating how the "Breitmann Ballads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English, were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation among the then youthful members of the Royal family, and what haste and alarm there was to put the forbidden book out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was announced as coming. I also met in Rome the American poet and painter T. Buchanan Read, who gave me a dinner, and very often that remarkable character General Carroll Tevis, who, having fought under most flags, and been a Turkish bey or pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope. In the following year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery in Bourbaki's retreat, and was decorated on the field of battle. Then again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the head of the military college. He had fairly won his rank of general in the American Civil War, but as there was some disinclination or other to give it to him, I had used my influence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it for him. He was a perfect type of the old condottiero, but with Dugald Dalgetty's scrupulous faith to his military engagements. The American clergyman in Rome was the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain Nevin. There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend (now residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we have continually been since, indebted for the most cordial hospitality.

Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled to see all the principal ceremonies of the Holy Week and Easter. This year, owing to the Council, everything was on a scale of unusual magnificence. I can say with Panurge that I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him, "and little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was much gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His Holiness.

There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome in those days—in fact, it was only last year (1891) that it was done away with. This was the drawing of the lottery by a priest. There was on a holy platform a holy wheel and a holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old priest to oversee and bless the whole precious business. The blessing of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the curse of Italy. What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings bank, the Italian invests in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in Florence twelve.

One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some other artists. I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for water, at a trattoria where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant maid. He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying great loaves of coarse bread. They had walked perhaps twenty miles to buy it, because in those days people were not allowed to bake their own bread, but must buy it at the public forno, which paid a tax for the privilege. So long as Rome was under Papal control, its every municipal institution, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a state of absolutely incredible inhuman vileness, while under everything ran corruption and dishonesty. The lower orders were severely disciplined as to their sexual morals, because it was made a rich source of infamous taxes, as it now is in other cities of Europe; but cardinals and the wealthier priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women were pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly in their carriages.

From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over the old Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where we remained six weeks, and then left in June, 1870, just before the war broke out. While in the city we saw at different times in public the Emperor and Empress, also the Queen of Spain. The face of Louis Napoleon was indeed somewhat changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so much as his circumstances, as he was according to external appearances and popular belief now extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and honesty, remaining to history only as a brazen royal adventurer and "copper captain."

In Rome our dear old friend Mrs. John Grigg showed us, as I said, many kind attentions, which she has, in Florence, continued to this day. This lady is own aunt to my old school friend General George B. McClellan. At an advanced age she executes without glasses the most exquisite embroidery conceivable, and her heart and intellect are in keeping with her sight.



VIII. ENGLAND. 1870.

The Trubners—George Eliot and G. H. Lewes—Heseltine—Edwards—Etched by Bracquemond and Legros—Jean Ingelow—Tennyson—Hepworth Dixon—Lord Lytton the elder—Lord Houghton—Bret Harte—France, Alsace, and Lorraine—Samuel Laing—Gypsies—The Misses Horace Smith—Brighton and odd fish—Work and books—Hunting—Dore—Art and Nature—Taglioni—Chevalier Wykoff—Octave Delepierre—Breitmann—Thomas Carlyle—George Borrow—A cathedral tour round about England—Salisbury, Wells, and York.

It is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and the passing from picturesque Dover to London through laughing Kent is a good introduction to the country. The untravelled American, fresh from the "boundless prairies" and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it all but the close cultivation of limited land; but the tourist from the Continent perceives at once that, with most careful agriculture, there are indications of an exuberance of wealth, true comfort, and taste rarely seen in France or Germany. The many trees of a better quality and slower growth than the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy; the hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green; the flowerbeds and walks about the poorest cottage; the neatly planted, prettily bridged side roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth or refinement such as prevails only in New England, or rather which did prevail, until the native population, going westward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if any worse there be at turning neatness into dirty disorder.

That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is clean neatness, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so common in Philadelphia—and in the people.

We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trubners', No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N.W. The first person who welcomed me was Mr. Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing Havannah. Mrs. Trubner had, in later years, two boxes of Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept two en souvenir. I knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and so forth. But, alas! once while away on his travels, the whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother. In fumo exit.

How many people well known to the world—or rather how few who were not—have I met there—Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trubner's uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, "and full many more," scholars, poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and quality. How many of them all have passed since then full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more! How many a pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carried out in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace! How often have I heard by land or sea the familiar greeting, "I think I met you once at the Trubners'!" For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays—a civilising institution!

Mrs. Trubner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian by early relation and education, she combined four types in one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron; in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trubner was four ladies united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in her sex, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject! This is a remarkable trait!

The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trubner took Mrs. Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trubners'. Both of these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London. I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently used in their writings! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous, marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to study—albeit with rare perception—than from an easy intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she worked out thoroughly what she knew by the intuition of genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the "Spanish Gypsy," having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order to write "Daniel Deronda," she had read through two hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim by the corners of their eyes!

I had read more than once Lewes's "Life of Goethe," his "History of Philosophy and Physiology," and even "written him" for the Cyclopaedia. With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as "frivolous and atheistic." I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of impudence!

"A hundred jests have passed between us twain, Which, had I space, I'd gladly tell again."

A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards' studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many ways for years. Legros I found very interesting. There was in Edwards' studio the unique complete collection of the etchings of Meryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of the incredibly long- continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high degree. Meryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.

Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson's reception, where I met with many well-known people. Among them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor for years at Miss Ingelow's receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848), Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and Mrs Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little passed between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better "later on."

I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I had with Tennyson in 1875, who had ad interim been deservedly "lauded into Lordliness," and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin's, and her niece Miss Cracroft. And here I may, in passing, say a word as to the extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.

There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it—

"Dell' Indico Oriente Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . . Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . ."—

he passed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led unto it thus:—My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Europe. My friend had translated "Home they brought her warrior dead," by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took me gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and drawing himself up to his full height, said, "I like to see a poet a full- sized substantial man," or "tall and strong," or words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of Shakespeare's bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit twice—the Poet Laureate being the second case—that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was. Enfin, some days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time after—in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile's distance.

I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that his father was taking his usual siesta, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, "Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have missed you." After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintanceship into the more familiar realm where one can talk about whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends with whom one never really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour at table- d'hotes, who "come like shadows, so depart," who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and apre miro zi, as the gypsies say—on my life-soul!—if I had talked with them, as I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences.

After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and said—

But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter. Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with trespassing. To which I replied, "Well, what is to pay?" He asked for two shillings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.

Therefore I said to Tennyson, "I went into that field yesterday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a shilling for trespassing."

And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted—"Served you right! What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries?"

"Mea culpa," I answered, "mea maxima culpa."

"Mr. Leland," pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, grasping all the absurdity of the thing with evident enjoyment, "you have no idea how tourists trespass here to get at me. They climb over my gate and look in at my windows. It is a fact—one did so only last week. But I declare that you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came here—to steal blackberries!" Here he paused, and then added forcibly—

"I do believe you are a gypsy, after all."

Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, and of the famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude monolith near by. I thought it prehistoric, because I had dug out from the pile of earth supporting and coeval with it (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped by hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication. My host listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale: how certain workmen employed by him to dig on his land had found a great number of old Roman bronze coins, but, instead of taking them to him, had kept them, though they cared so little for them that they gave a handful to a boy whom they met. "I told them," said Tennyson, "that they had been guilty of malappropriation, and though I was not quite sure whether the coins belonged to me or to the Crown, that they certainly had no right to them. Whereupon their leader said that if I was not satisfied they would not work any longer for me, and so they went away." I had on this occasion a long and interesting discussion with Mr. Tennyson relative to Walt Whitman, and involving the principles or nature of poetry. According to the poet-laureate, poetry, as he understood it, consisted of elevated or refined, or at least superior thought, expressed in melodious form, and in this latter it seemed to him (for it was very modestly expressed) that Whitman was wanting. Wherein he came nearer to the truth than does Symonds, who overrates, as it seems to me, the value, as regards art and poetry, of simply equalising all human intelligences. Though I never met Symonds, there was mutual knowledge between us, and when I published my "Etrusco-Roman Remains in Popular Traditions," which contains the results of six years' intimacy with witches and fortune-tellers, he wrote a letter expressing enthusiastic admiration of it to Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Now all three of these great men are dead. I shall speak of Whitman anon, for in later years for a long time I met him almost daily.

I can remember that during the conversation Tennyson expressed himself, rather to my amazement, with some slight indignation at a paltry review abusing his latest work; to which I replied—

"If there is anything on earth for which I have envied you, even more than for your great renown as a poet, it has been because I supposed you were completely above all such attacks and were utterly indifferent to them." Which he took amiably, and proceeded to discuss ripe fruit and wasps—or their equivalent. Yet I doubt whether I was quite in the right, since those who live for fame honourably acquired must ever be susceptible to stings, small or great. An editor who receives abusive letters so frequently that he ends by pitching them without reading into the waste-basket, and often treats ribald attacks in print in the same manner—as I have often done—has so many other affairs on his mind that he becomes case-hardened. But I have observed from long experience that there is a Nemesis who watches those who arrogate the right to lay on the rod, and gives it to them with interest in the end.

It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was invited to lunch at Hepworth Dixon's to meet Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, the great writer. His works had been so intensely and sympathetically loved by me so long, that it seemed as if I had been asked to meet some great man of the past. I found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous kind. I remember a droll incident. Standing at the head of the stairs, he courteously made way and asked me to go before. I replied, "When Louis XIV. asked Crillon to do the same, Crillon complied, saying, 'Wherever your Majesty goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post of honour,' and I say the same with him," and so went in advance at once. I saw by his expression that he was pleased with the quotation.

We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which Dixon had found in Russia. Lord Lytton asked me if I thought it an original or true likeness. I observed that the face was full of many fine seamy lines, which infallibly indicate great nervous genius of the highest order—noting at the same time that Lord Lytton's countenance was very much marked in a like manner. The observation was new to him, and he seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in anything like chiromancy or metoscopy. A few days later I was invited to come and pass nearly a week with Hepworth Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton's country seat. It is a very picturesque chateau, profusely adorned with fifteenth-century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained glass windows, and gallery. There is in it a chamber containing a marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts of which are human figures the size of life, and in it and in the same room Queen Elizabeth is said to have slept when she heard of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to me. It all seemed like a dream.