The incident, though it cost me the work of three months, and was in fact the only important outcome of the summer's study, did not diminish my confidence in Ruskin's judgment and correct feeling for art. It required a still more severe experience. As all the world knows, that knows anything of Ruskin's ways with artists, he was blunt and outspoken in his criticisms, and not in the least tender of their feelings, unless indeed they happened to be women. Knowing this, I took his praise for certain studies and drawings I had brought with me as a patent of ability; and though I was never extravagant in my opinion of my own capacities for art, his approbation of some things that I had done, and his assurance of a respectable attainment if I followed the best methods of study, encouraged me, and I took it without question that the methods were his, and it was a costly experience which undeceived me.

Of the people with whom I made acquaintance in London at this visit, those who most interested me were Clough and Owen. Of the artists I saw little, as they and myself had other things to do than to frequent one another's studios; but by the Rossetti family I profited largely, as I had been more or less in intimate relations with William since he undertook the correspondence of "The Crayon" from England. Of Dante, indeed, I saw little at that time, as he lived by himself; but with William my relations were constant and cordial, and he was for many years my most valued English friend. Through his extreme honesty and liberality, and his extensive knowledge of and wide feeling for art, there was great community of appreciation between us, and our friendship lasted long beyond the direct interest I had in English art matters.

Of Christina I saw a good deal, for the hospitality of the Rossetti family was informal and cordial. She was then in excellent health, and, though she was never what would be, by the generality of tastes, considered a beautiful woman, there was a noble serenity and dignity of expression in her face which was, as is often said of women of the higher type of character, "better than beauty," and in which one saw the spiritual exaltation that, without the least trace of the devote, dominated in her and made her, before all other women of whom I know anything, the poetess of the divine life. The faith in the divine flamed out in her with a mild radiance which had in it no earthly warmth. She attracted me very strongly, but I should as soon have thought of falling in love with the Madonna del Gran Duca as with her. Being myself in the regions of dogmatic faith, I was in a position to judge sympathetically her religion, and, though we differed in tenets as far as two sincere believers in Christianity could, I found in our discussions of the dogmas a broad and affectionate charity in her towards all differences from the ideal of credence she had formed for herself. I do not remember ever meeting any one who held such exalted and unquestioning faith in the true spiritual life as was hers. From my mother, who was in most respects the most purely spiritual woman I have ever known, Christina differed by this serenity, which in my mother was often disturbed by the doubts that had their seeds in the old and superstitious Calvinism mingled with the ground of her creed, and from which she never could liberate herself.

Christina believed in God, in heaven, in the eternal life, with an unfaltering constancy and fullness which left no questionings except, it might be, concerning her fulfillment of her religious obligations. And while I thought her belief in certain dogmas, such as transubstantiation, and in the fasting and ritual of her High Church observances, to be too trivial for such a really exalted intellect, so near the perception of the essential truth, she held them with such a childlike and tranquil faith that I would sooner have worshiped with her than have disturbed her tranquillity in it. She gave me a demonstration of doctrinal charity which was to me a novelty, and showed me that tenets which are to me, and those trained like me, idle formalities were in reality the steps of a ladder by which she must climb to the realization of the abstract good. Dogmas and observances apart, I felt that her religion was so much loftier than my own that, though it would have been impossible for me to profess acceptance of it, it was equally impossible to argue with her about it,—that it was so woven into the fibre of her existence that to move it in the least would be impossible, or, if possible, only at the cost of mental and spiritual dislocation. But, with all this, there was not in her a trace of the assumption of a religious superiority which I have so often found in the driest non-conformist, or the putting me apart with the creatures that perish and are doomed which I have oftener found in Catholic friends, with whom I have felt that they regarded me with a sort of pitiful friendship, as one certain to be damned, and so only worth a limited regard, lest love should be wasted. In after years I saw her not infrequently, and when illness and grief had touched her, and I saw always the same serenity and the same wide personal charity.

Much of Christina's character one could see in her mother, a noble and worshipful woman, in whom the domestic virtues mingled with the spiritual in a way that set off the singleness of life of Christina singularly, as if it were the same light in an earthen vessel. Mrs. Rossetti was what one often hears spoken of as "a dear, good woman," whose motherly life had absorbed her existence,—one of the witnesses (martyrs) of the practical Christianity, who go, unseen and unknown, to build the universal church of humanity, and whom we reverence without naming them. Of Maria, the elder sister of Christina, I saw less, but enough to know that the same ardent, beautiful religious spirit burned in her, mute. In the years when I, later, saw most of the family, Maria lived in a sisterhood. She had none of the genius or the personal charm of her sister, but possessed the same elevation and serene religious sentiment.

Of Clough I saw a good deal, though his occupation in a government office left him not much leisure; and it seemed to me that, of all public officials I ever knew, he was the most misplaced at an office desk. Of fragile health and with the temperament of a poet, gentle as a woman can be, he often reminded me of Pegasus in harness. I had a commission from Norton to paint a small full-length portrait of him, and had several sittings; but it did not get on to suit me, and his being compelled to go to Italy for his health before I had finished with it, for well or ill, put an end to it. He left me in occupation of his house while they were away. Of all the people of the poet's temper I ever knew, Clough was the least inclined to talk of poetry, and but for the sensitive mouth and the dreamy eye, with a reflective way he had when talking, as if an undercurrent of thought were going on while he spoke, one might have taken him for a well-educated man of business, a poet-banker, or publisher. Perhaps it is in the memory more than it was in the life, but as I recall him there seemed to be in him an arcanum of thought, something beyond what came into every-day existence,—a life beyond the actual life, into which he withdrew, and out of which he came to speak. I should have liked to live beside him and know him always, for in that phase of him was infinite study. What I did see, however, left on me the impression of a man who was able only to sketch out the life he would have lived,—a life of far greater capabilities than anything accomplished could indicate.

In giving me the letter to Tom Hughes, Lowell had remarked that, though he had never seen him, yet, as Hughes had edited his "Biglow Papers," he thought he might assume an acquaintance sufficient to warrant a letter of introduction. He was not mistaken, for Hughes did the fullest honor to his letter; and as long as I was in London, and indeed for many years after, our relations were of the most cordial, and not long before his death he made me a visit at Rome. Very much of the enjoyment of that winter in London was due to the hospitable and companionable welcome of the author of "Tom Brown," and one of the most enjoyable items was the introduction to the evenings at Macmillan's, where the contributors to the magazine used to meet on Thursday evenings, if I remember rightly, and where I saw the Kingsleys,—Charles only once, but Henry often enough to contract with him a pleasant friendship. Hughes was one of the largest and most genial English natures I knew,—robust, all alive to all his human obligations; and in those troublesome days when the American question was coming to the crisis of our Civil War he was a consistent friend of the North, when the dominant feeling in English society was hostile to it, and this was a strong bond between us.

Owen I saw frequently, and, though my scientific education was, and is, superficial, he interested me greatly; for he had, like Agassiz, the gift of making his knowledge accessible to those who only understood the philosophy and not the facts of science, and I knew enough of the former to profit by his knowledge. Then he was a warm friend of Agassiz, and we used to talk of his theories and studies, of which I knew more than of any other scientific subject. Like Agassiz, he had at first resisted the theory of natural selection, but had, unlike Agassiz, come to recognize the necessity of admitting the idea of evolution in some form, like Asa Gray and Jeffries Wyman. How far he finally went in recognizing the agency of natural selection as the sufficient element in this I do not know, for at that time the battle waged over that phase of the question; but that he did not accept the solution proposed by Darwin as final I have reason to believe, from the fact that, the last time I saw him, he assured me that he was confident that if he could have seen Agassiz again before he died he could have persuaded him that evolution was the solution of the problem of creation, though knowing that Agassiz could never have accepted the doctrine of natural selection in its bareness, absolutely convinced as he was of the agency of Conscious Mind in creation. And I had the further declaration of Owen himself in his expressed conviction that the process of evolution was directed by the Divine Intelligence. One statement he made struck me forcibly in this connection, viz.: that he believed that the evolution of the horse reached its culmination synchronously with the evolution of man, and that the agreement was a part of the divine plan, while Darwin refuses to admit a plan in creation. I have heard amongst evolutionists much bitterness expressed concerning Owen for what they considered his yielding to the pressure of public opinion, and adopting the theory of evolution in contradiction to his real convictions; but I saw enough of him to be certain that he really believed in evolution subject to the dominance of the Divine Intelligence, nor did any of the accusations I heard against him persuade me of the least insincerity in his acceptance of the theory with that qualification,—a position, I am convinced, held by many, even then, who did not openly support it, not caring to go counter to the very general advocacy of natural selection.

The teaching of Owen completed my conversion to the theory of evolution as a general law, not on grounds of physical science, the demonstration by which is and must remain forever incomplete, but on the philosophical ground, which I was more capable of measuring; and with the acceptance of evolution disappeared, logically and, in the subsequent years, completely, the influence of the old anthropomorphic religion, with its terrible dogmas of the inheritance of Adam's transgression and an angry God with His vicarious punishment of His only son, with all the puzzles of miraculous intervention and the perplexities of an infallible revealed word which continually contradicts itself. The conception of Deity thus liberated from the fetters of a materialistic faith rose to a dignity I had never before comprehended, and brought me the new perception of a spiritual religion and life, which was more consoling and vivifying by far than the old belief.

It is possible that the impressions of that time have been modified by my subsequent intercourse with scientific men in England; but they are that the very wide and rapid acceptance of the theory of evolution by natural selection was largely due to the relief it offered from the incubus of the old theological conception of the Deity as a personal agency, always interfering with the course of events,—an infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient stage manager,—a conception under which the Christian world at large lay when Darwin announced his solution of the problem. The religious world had been, up to that time, chained to the anthropomorphic conception of Deity, and it was even less due to the purely scientific faculty than to the philosophic that Darwin came as a liberator from a depressing superstition,—the belief in the terrible Hebrew God, ingrained in the conscience of every reverently educated boy, and become in his growth inseparable from the maturer beliefs. The evolution of the human mind itself had finally reached the point at which this anthropomorphism became a thing impossible to maintain reasonably any longer, and the magic word was spoken by Darwin which broke the spell and set us free—who wished to be free—from a mental servitude grown dangerously dear to our deepest faculties, those of reverence and devotion. That evolution took hold slowly with some who finally adopted it was owing to the fact that, with them, that servitude had never been slavish, but always held less sway than pure reason. And contemporaneously with this evolution of the human mind had come the liberation from religious persecution, either inquisitorial, legal, or social; and, perhaps for the first time in the history of the religious dogma, a man might openly dispute the fundamental ideas of a dominant religion and suffer no penalty for his skepticism.



CHAPTER XVII

SWITZERLAND

Though my "Bed of Ferns" was sent back from the Academy, one of my large studies was exhibited at the British Society, and the result of the year's work was, on the whole, satisfactory. Ruskin invited me to go to Switzerland with him for the summer, finding in some of my studies and drawings the possibility of getting from me some of the Alpine work he wanted done. Unfortunately for both of us I could not draw well in traces, and he did not quite well know how to drive, and the summer ended in disappointment, and finally in disaster. I was too undisciplined to work except when the mood suited, and our moods rarely agreed: he wanted things which were to me of no interest, and I could not interest myself vicariously enough to do them to his satisfaction. He preceded me some weeks, and it was arranged that I should come to meet him at Geneva early in June. Certainly I owe to him my earliest and most delightful memories of the Alps and of Switzerland. More princely hospitality than his no man ever received, or more kindly companionship; but, as might have been expected, we agreed neither in temperament nor in method, if indeed the mainly self-taught way in which I worked and thought could be called method.

He met me with a carriage at Culoz, to give and enjoy my first impressions of the distant Alps, and for the ten days we stopped at Geneva I stayed with him at the Hotel des Bergues. We climbed the Saleve, and I saw what gave me more pleasure, I confess, than the distant view of Mont Blanc, which he expected me to be enthusiastic over,—the soldanella and gentians. The great accidents of nature,—Niagara and the high Alps,—though they awe me, have always left me cold; and all that summer I should have been more fruitfully employed in some nook of English scenery, where nature went undisturbed by catastrophes and cataclysms.

Our first sketching excursion was to the Perte du Rhone, and, while Ruskin was drawing some mountain forms beyond the river, he asked me to draw some huts near by,—not picturesque cottages, thatched roofs and lichen-stained walls, but shanties, such as the Irish laborers on our railways build by the roadside, of deal boards on end, irregular and careless without being picturesque, and too closely associated with pigsty construction, in my mind, to be worth drawing. When Ruskin came back I had made a careless and slipshod five minutes' sketch, not worth the paper it was on, as to me were not the originals. Ruskin was angry, and he had a right to be; for at least I should have found it enough that he wanted it done, to make me do my best on it, but I did not think of it in that light. We drove back towards Geneva in silence,—he moody and I sullen,—and halfway there he broke out, saying that the fact that he wanted the drawing done ought to have been enough to make me do it. I replied that I could see no interest in the subject, which to me only suggested fever and discomfort, and wretched habitations for human beings. We relapsed into silence, and for another mile nothing was said, when Ruskin broke out with, "You were right, Stillman, about those cottages; your way of looking at them was nobler than mine, and now, for the first time in my life, I understand how anybody can live in America."

We went to Bonneville to hunt out the point of view of a Turner drawing which Ruskin liked, but, needless to say, though we ransacked the neighborhood for views, we never found Turner's; and then we went on to St. Martin, the little village opposite Sallanches, on the Arve. For a subalpine landscape with Mont Blanc in the distance, this is the most attractive bit of the Alpine country I know, with picturesque detail and pleasant climbing up to 7000 feet. The view of Mont Blanc, too, is certainly the finest from below which can be found. In fine weather the mountain is hidden to the summit by clouds which clear away at sunset, and from the little and picturesque bridge over the Arve we saw the huge dome come out, and glow in the sunlight, when we were all in shadow. It was to me new and startling, this huge rosy orb, which at its first appearance suggests a huger moon rising above the clouds, until, slowly, the clouds below melt away, and the mountain stands disclosed to its base. If anything in the Alps can be called truly picturesque, it is the view of the Aiguille de Varens which overhangs the village of St. Martin, with the quaint and lichenous church and cemetery in the foreground, and I made a large drawing of it from the bridge, intending to return and work it up after Ruskin had left me. The little inn of the village was the most comfortable auberge I was ever in, and its landlord the kindest and most hospitable of hosts. Twenty years later I went back to the locality, hoping to find something of the old time; but there was only a deserted hostel, the weeds growing over the courtyard, and the sealed and mouldy doors and windows witnessing ancient desertion.

Hardly had I become interested in my drawing when Ruskin decided to move on to Chamounix, where we might hope to get really to work. When the first sublime and overpowering impression of Chamounix and the majesty and gloom of its narrow valley wore off, it began to oppress me, and long before we got away I felt as if I were in a huge grave. The geological interest was great, and the sublimity overpowering. But to my mind sublimity does not suffice for art; the beautiful must predominate, and of the beautiful there is little in the valley. The sublime rendered on a small scale is not satisfactory; the beautiful loses nothing by reduction.

I was disappointed in the High Alps,—they left me cold; and after visiting the points of view Turner had taken drawings from, we went up to the Montanvert, where Ruskin wished me to paint for him a wreath of Alpine rose. We found the rose growing luxuriantly against a huge granite boulder, a pretty natural composition, and I set to work on it with great satisfaction, for botanical painting always interested me. Ruskin sat and watched me work, and expressed his surprise at my facility of execution of details and texture, saying that, of the painters he knew, only Millais had so great facility of execution. We were living at the little hotel of the Montanvert, and he was impatient to get back to the better accommodation of the valley hotels; so that when the roses and the rocks were done we went back, the completion of the picture being left for later study. From Paris, in the ensuing winter, I sent it to Ruskin, the distance being made of the actual view down the valley of Chamounix; and he wrote me a bitter condemnation of it, as a disappointment; for he said that he "had expected to see the Alpine roses overhanging an awful chasm," etc. (an expectation he should have given expression to earlier), and found it very commonplace and uninteresting. So it was, and I burnt it after the fashion of the "Bed of Ferns." As Rowse said of him later, "he wanted me to hold the brush while he painted." But our ideas clashed continually, and what he wanted was impossible,—to make me see with his eyes; and so we came to great disappointment in the end.

I was very much interested in his old guide, Coutet, with whom I had many climbs. He liked to go with me, he said, because I was very sure-footed and could go wherever he did. He was a famous crystal-hunter, and many of the rarest specimens in the museum of Geneva were of his finding. There was one locality of which only he knew, where the rock was pitted with small turquoises like a plum pudding, and I begged him to tell me where it was. There is a superstition amongst the crystal-hunters that to tell where the crystals are found brings bad luck, and he would never tell me in so many words; but one day, after my importunity, I saw him leveling his alpenstock on the ground in a very curious way, sighting along it and correcting the direction, and when he had finished he said, as he walked past me, "Look where it points," and went away. It was pointing to a stratum halfway up to the summit of one of the aiguilles to the west of the Mer de Glace, a chamois climb. He told me later that he found the crystals in the couloir that brought them down from that stratum. A dear old man was Coutet, and fully deserving the affection and confidence of Ruskin. Connected with him was a story which Ruskin told me there of a locality in the valley of Chamounix, of which the guides had told him, haunted by a ghost which could be seen only by children. It was a figure of a woman who raked the dead leaves, and when she looked up at them the children said they saw only a skull in place of a face. Ruskin sent to a neighboring valley for a child who could know nothing of the legend, and went with him to the locality which the ghost haunted. Arrived there he said to the boy, "What a lonely place! There is nobody here but ourselves." "No," said the child, "there is a woman there raking the leaves," pointing in a certain direction. "Let us go nearer to her," said Ruskin; and they walked that way, when the boy stopped, saying that he did not want to go nearer, for the woman looked up, and he said that she had no eyes in her head,—"only holes."

The valley of Chamounix finally became to me the most gloomy and depressing place I was ever in. We made excursions and a few sketches; but I had little sympathy with it, though I tried to do what Ruskin wanted, and to get a faithful study of some characteristic subject in the valley. Every fine day we climbed some secondary peak, five or six thousand feet, and in the evenings we discussed art or played chess, mainly in rehearsing problems, until midnight. Sundays no work was done, but we used to climb some easy hilltop; and there he spent the afternoon in writing a sermon for a girls' school in which he was much interested, but not a hue of drawing would he do. To me, brought up in the severity of Sabbatarianism, the sanctity of the first day of the week had always been a theological fiction, and the result of the contact with the larger world of thinkers and the widening of my range of thought by the study of philosophy had also made me see that the observances of "new moons and fast-days" had nothing to do with true religion, and that the Eden repose of the Creator was too large a matter to be fenced into a day of the week. This slavery to a formality in which Ruskin was held by his terrible conscience provoked me, therefore, to the discussion of the subject.

I showed him that there was no authority for the transference of the Christian weekly rest from the seventh to the first day of the week, and we went over the texts together, in which study my Sabbatarian education gave me an advantage in argument; for he had never given the matter a thought. Of course he took refuge in the celebration of the weekly return of the day of Christ's resurrection; but I showed him that the text does not support the claim that Christ rose on the first day of the week, and that the early fathers, who arranged that portion of the ritual, did not understand the tradition of the resurrection. "Three days and three nights," according to the gospel, Christ was to lie in the tomb,—not parts of three times twenty-four hours. But the women went to the tomb "in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week," and they found that he had already risen and was gone. Now, as by the Jewish ritual the day began at sunset, the first day of the week began with the going down of the sun on Saturday, and, therefore, as Christ had already risen, he must have risen on the seventh day. And the reason of this twilight visit was in the prohibition to touch a dead body on the Sabbath, and the zeal of the disciples sent them to the sepulchre at the earliest possible moment. And I showed him how careless or ignorant of the record the redisposition of the sacred time had been, in the fact of the total disregard of the words of Christ, that he should lie in the earth three days and three nights; for they assumed him to have been crucified on Friday, while he must have lain buried Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and was therefore buried on Wednesday, just before sunset. And this is confirmed by the text which says that the disciples hastened to bury Christ on the day of crucifixion, because the next day was the day of preparation for one of the high Sabbaths, which the early church, which instituted the observance of the first day, confounded with the weekly Sabbath, not knowing that a high Sabbath could not fall on the weekly Sabbath.

To this demonstration Ruskin, always deferent to the literal interpretation of the gospel, could not make a defense; the creed had so bound him to the letter that the least enlargement of the stricture broke it, and he rejected the whole tradition,—not only the Sunday Sabbath, but the authority of the ecclesiastical interpretation of the texts. He said, "If they have deceived me in this, they have probably deceived me in all," and he came to the conclusion of rejecting all. This I had not conceived as a possible consequence of the criticism of his creed, and it gave me great pain; for I was not a skeptic, as he, I have since learned, for a time became. It was useless to argue with him for the spirit of the gospel; he had always held to its infallibility and the exactitude of doctrine, and his indignation was too strong to be pacified. He returned somewhat, I have heard, to his old beliefs in later years, as old men will to the beliefs of their youth, and his Christianity was too sincere and profound for a matter of mistaken credence in mere formalities ever to affect its substance, and the years which followed showed that in no essential trait had the religious foundations of his character been moved. For myself, I was still a sincere believer in the substantial accuracy of the body of Christian doctrine, and the revolt of Ruskin from it gave me great pain. My own entire liberation from the burdens of futile beliefs had yet to come, and at that time he went further than I could go with him. But we never discussed theological matters any more.

I finally found a subject which interested me in a view of the foot of the Mer de Glace from the opposite side of the river, looking up the glacier, with the bridge under the Brevent, and a cottage in the foreground, and set to work on it energetically. Ruskin used to sit behind me and comment on my work. My methods of painting were my own, for I had never painted under any one except the few months with Church, whose method had taught me nothing; and I had a way of painting scud clouds, such as always hang around the Alpine peaks, by brushing the sky in thinly with the sky-blue, and then working into that, with the brush, the melting clouds, producing the grays I wanted on the canvas. It imitated the effect of nature logically, as the pigment imitated the mingling of the vapor with the blue sky; but Ruskin said this was incorrect, and that the colors must be laid like mosaic, side by side, in the true tint. Another discouragement! I used to lay in the whole subject, beginning with the sky, rapidly and broadly, and, when it was dry, returning to the foreground and finishing towards the distance; and Buskin was delighted with the foreground painting, insisting on my doing nothing further to it. In the distance was the Montanvert and the Aiguille du Dru; but where the lines of the glacier and the slopes of the mountain at the right met, five nearly straight lines converged at a point far from the centre, and I did not see how to get rid of them without violating the topography. I pointed it out to Ruskin, and he immediately exclaimed: "Oh, nothing can he done with a subject like that, with five lines radiating from an unimportant point! I will not stay here to see you finish that study." And the next day we packed up and left for Geneva.

At Lausanne I made some careful architectural drawings, which he praised,—some pencil sketches on the lake; and then we drove across country to Freiburg, and finally to Neuchatel, where I found a magnificent subject in the view from the hill behind the city, looking over the lake towards the Alps, with Mont Blanc and the Bernese Alps in the extreme distance. In the near distance rise the castle and its old church, which Ruskin drew for me in pencil with exquisite refinement of detail, for in this kind of drawing he was most admirable. As we should stay only a few days, I could not paint anything, and spent all my time, working nine hours a day, hard, on the one subject in pencil. We still spent our evenings till late in discussions and arguments, with a little chess, rarely going to bed before midnight; and the steady strain, with my anxiety to lose none of my time and opportunities, finally told on my eyes. One day, while working hard on the view of Neuchatel, I felt something snap behind my eyes, and in a few minutes I could no longer see my drawing; the slightest attempt to fix my vision on anything caused such indistinctness that I could see neither my work nor the landscape, and I was obliged to suspend work altogether. In a few days we went to Basle, and, after a rest, my vision came back partially, and we went to Laufenburg, where Turner had found the subject for one of his Liber Studiorum engravings. Here the subjects were entirely after my feeling, and, as my eyes had ceased to trouble me, I set to work on a large drawing of the town and fall from below. In the midst of it the snapping behind my eyes came back, worse than ever, and that time not to leave me for a long time. It was followed by an incessant headache, which made life a burden, with obstinate indigestion. Here Ruskin suddenly found that he must go back to England, and I returned with him as far as Geneva, and thence went to St. Martin, where I spent the rest of the autumn, as helpless for all work as a blind man.

My summer with Ruskin, to which I had looked for so much profit to my art, had ended in a catastrophe of which I did not then even measure the extent. It was nearly two years before I recovered from the attack at Neuchatel enough to work regularly, and these circumstances threw me still further from my chosen career. More exciting and absorbing occupation called me, and I obeyed, whether for better or worse it now matters not. When I was free to return with undivided attention to my painting my enthusiasm had cooled, and human interests claimed and kept me. Ruskin had dragged me from my old methods, and given me none to replace them. I lost my faith in myself, and in him as a guide to art, and we separated definitely, years later, on a personal question in which he utterly misunderstood me; but, apart from questions of art, he always remains to me one of the largest and noblest of all the men I have known, liberal and generous beyond limit, with a fineness of sympathy in certain directions and delicacy of organization quite womanly. Nothing could shake my admiration for his moral character or abate my reverence for him as a humanist. That art should have been anything more than a side interest with him, and that he should have thrown the whole energy of his most energetic nature into the reforming of it, was a misfortune to him and to the world, but especially to me.

At St. Martin I waited the return of my vision. I climbed, and tried chamois-hunting with no success so far as game was concerned, though I saw the beautiful creatures in their homes, and now rejoice that I did not kill any, though I fear I wounded one mortally, where we could not retrieve him. One of my excursions was to the summit of the Aiguille de Varens, by a path, in one place cut in the face of a precipice, only wide enough for one's feet, with sheer cliff above and below, and nothing to hold by. I have a good head, but to follow my guide on that path was something which only mauvaise honte brought me to. I was ashamed to hesitate where he walked along so cheerily. We arranged to spend the night at a chalet where a milkmaid with the figure of the Venus of Milo tended a remnant of the herd, most of which had already descended to the valleys below. As the sun was setting I walked out to the brow of the aiguille, which from below seemed a point, but was in reality only the perpendicular face of a mass of mountain which in the other direction sloped away towards Switzerland for miles. The view of Mont Blanc, directly opposite, then bare of clouds from the base to the summit, with the red sunset light falling full on the great fields of snow, of which I had never realized the extent from any other point, was by far the most imposing view of the great mountain I have ever found. I stood at an elevation of about 7000 feet, halfway to the summit of Mont Blanc, with the whole broad expanse of glacier and snowfield glowing in the rosy twilight; and, while I watched the sun set, at my feet lay the valley of the Arve, with the town of Sallanches and its attendant villages in the blue distance of gathering night, thousands of feet below me. As I looked, enchanted, the chimes of the convent below rang out a Gregorian air, which came up to my heights like a solemn monition from the world of dreams, for nothing could be distinguished of its source. We started a chamois, and saw him race across the broad field of snow like the wind, while I could only follow, laboring knee-deep in the snow, like a tortoise after a hare. We slept that night buried in the hay. I am glad to say that the hunt in the morning was without other result than a delightful walk, for my guide was a better climber than huntsman.

A few days later, I made, with another guide, an excursion to the Col des Fours, on the other side of the valley. The guide was an old professional hunter, and knew the habits of the chamois well. We climbed up leisurely in the afternoon, and slept in the hay of a deserted chalet; for from there the cattle had already been all driven down. While the guide prepared the supper, I walked out to the edge of the cliffs to get the view. The landscape had become a sea of mist,—a river, rather; for the whole valley was filled with a moving, billowy flood of fog flowing from Mont Blanc, and enveloping mountain and valley alike in a veil of changing vapor, melting, forming, and flowing beneath my feet, hiding every object in the landscape below the cliffs I stood on. It made me dizzy, for I seemed to be in the clouds. And while I waited there came a transfiguration of the scene,—the mist began to grow rosy, and deeper and deeper, till it was almost like a sea of blood. No source of light was visible from my point of view, but, of course, the phenomenon, though seemingly mysterious, was evident. The sun, in setting, illuminated the fields of snow at the summit of the mountain beyond, which reverberated its flaming light into the vapor below, penetrating it down to my feet, but the mountain itself was, from my elevation, invisible. It passed like all glories, and quicker than most.

The next morning we went to take our posts for a chamois drive. A friend of the guide, whom he had picked up to profit by my coming, took one side of the valley, and I the other, while a boy with an umbrella went down the valley to drive the chamois up to us. Having posted me, the stupid guide crossed the line of the drive between me and the meadow where the chamois would come to feed, and took his post, hiding nearer the peaks where they had passed the night. Soon after sunrise they made their appearance on a field of snow which sloped down into the Val,—nine, young and old. I shall never see anything prettier than the play of those young chamois on the snow. They butted and chased each other over the snow, frolicked like kittens, standing on their hind legs and pushing each other, until, probably, they grew hungry, and then came down to the grass to feed. This was the moment for the driver to come in, and he came up the valley waving his arms and umbrella and shouting. The chamois came in my direction till they crossed the track of the old hunter, scenting which they halted, sniffed the air, and then broke in panic, the majority running back past the driver and within a few yards of him, so that if he had had a gun he could easily have killed one, and went down the valley out of sight; three came up the valley, taking the flank of the almost perpendicular rocks, within shot of me, but at full gallop, and I fired at the middle one of the group. They passed behind a mass of rock as I fired, and two came out on the other side. If I hit one I could not know, for the place was inaccessible, but I hope that I missed. I have often thought of the possibility that I might have hit the poor beast, and sent him mortally wounded amongst the rocks to die, and I never recur to the incident without pain. It becomes incomprehensible to me, as my own life wanes, how I could ever have found pleasure in taking the lives of other creatures filling their stations in the world better than I ever did. The late educated soul pays the penalty of earlier ignorance, but there is no atonement to the victims.

I stayed at St. Martin while the plebiscite and annexation to France took place. It was a hollow affair, the voting being a mockery, but the Sardinian government had never made itself seriously felt in Savoy, for either good or ill; the people were a quiet and law-abiding race, and while I was in the country I never heard of a crime or a prosecution. The regiments of Savoyard troops went into the French army with ill will, and there was a bloody fight between them and the French soldiers at Lyons when the former went into the barracks there.

I was at St. Martin when the Emperor and Empress made their tour through the new possession. The state carriages had to be left at Sallanches when the sovereigns went up to the great ball offered them at Chamounix, and, when they returned, the little mountain carriages which brought them down halted under the windows of the auberge of St. Martin, in which I lived, to wait for the state carriages to come across the river. They had to wait about half an hour, and as they walked up and down in the road under my window, beside which stood my loaded rifle, I thought how easily I could change the course of European politics, for I could have hit any button on the Emperor's clothes, and I hated him enough to have killed him cheerfully, as an enemy of mankind; but regicide has always seemed to me a great mistake, as it would have been in that case, for it would only have placed the young Prince Imperial on the throne, under the regency of the Empress. I was then a radical republican, with all the sympathies of a Parisian Red, for I had not learned that it is less the form of the government than the character of the governed which makes the difference between governments. I did not spare the life of the Emperor from any apprehension of consequences to me, for I had none. I knew the paths up the mountain at the back of the hotel, and before the confusion should have been overcome, and a pursuit organized, I could have been beyond danger, on my way to the Swiss frontier, for the pine woods came to the back door of the hotel; and beyond that, I never had the habit of thinking of the consequences of what I proposed to do. When I returned to Paris, after the autumn had passed, I told the story to an artist friend, an ultraradical, how I stood at my window with a loaded rifle by my side, and the Emperor twenty feet below, and he shouted with fury, "And you didn't kill him?" Time and fate have punished him more fitly than I should have done, and wise men leave these things to time and fate.



CHAPTER XVIII

PARIS AGAIN THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA

I remained in Paris all that winter, and took a studio with an American friend,—Mr. Yewell,—but I could do no work; the headache never left me, and, though I could draw a little, my vision failed when it was strained, and I seemed to have lost my color sense. I was desperate, and, when Garibaldi set out on the Marsala expedition, I was just on the point of sailing to join him when I received a letter from the father of my fiancee, telling me that her perplexities and distress of mind over our marriage had so increased that they feared for her reason if she were not set at rest. I took the next steamer, and ended the vacillation by insisting on being married at once. Nothing but a morbid self-depreciation had prevented her from coming to a decision in the matter long before, and there was no other solution than to assume command and impose my will. We were married two days after my landing, and returned to Paris a few days after. When the spring opened we went down into Normandy, and there, returning to the study of nature and living in quiet and freedom from anxiety, I slowly and partially recovered my vision, and began to regain in a measure the power of drawing. The landscape of the quiet French country suited me perfectly, and I made two or three good studies, but without getting into a really efficient condition for painting, which I only did a year or two later at Rome.

Our winter in Paris had been greatly brightened by the acquaintance of the Brownings, the father and sister of the poet. We lived in the same section of Paris, near the Hotel des Invalides, and much of our time was passed with them. "Old Mr. Browning" we have always called him, though the qualification of "old," by which we distinguished him from his son Robert, seemed a misnomer, for he had the perpetual juvenility of a blessed child. If to live in the world as if not of it indicates a saintly nature, then Robert Browning the elder was a saint: a serene, untroubled soul, conscious of no moral or theological problem to disturb his serenity, and as gentle as a gentle woman,—a man in whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life as he found it come to him. He had, many years before we knew him, inherited an estate in Jamaica, but on learning that to work it to profit he must become a slave owner he renounced the heritage. And, knowing him as we knew him, it is easy to see that he would renounce it cheerfully and without any hesitation. A man of a rougher and more energetic type might have tried the experiment, or questioned the judgment, at least have regretted his own integrity, but Browning could have done neither. The way was clear, and the decision must have been as quick as that of a child to reject a thing it abhorred. His unworldliness had not a flaw. So beautiful a life can never have become distinguished in the struggles and antagonisms which make the career of the man of the world, or even the man of letters, as letters are now written; for he was a man, and the only one I ever knew, of whom one would say that he applied in the divine sense the maxim of Christ, "Resist not evil,"—he simply, and by the necessity of his own nature, ignored it.

He had a curious facility in drawing heads of quaint and always varied character, which character he could not foresee when he began the drawing. They were always in profile, and he began at one extremity and ran his pencil round to the other, always bringing out an individuality, but without any intention as to what that should be; and he named it, when it was done, according to the type it offered, generally in character, with a trace of caricature, and, for the most part, subjects from the courts of law,—a judge or a puzzled juror, a disappointed or a triumphant client, etc., etc. He would draw a dozen or twenty in an evening, all different and all unforeseen, as much to him as to us, and he was as much amused as we were when it turned out more than usually funny. His chief amusement was hunting through the bookstalls along the quays, and I have, amongst my old books, an early life of Raphael, which he gave me, with his name on the fly leaf.

Of Miss Browning, who still lives, I will not speak; but what she told me of the poet's mother may, I think, be told without indiscretion. She had the extraordinary power over animals of which we hear sometimes, but of which I have never known a case so perfect as hers. She would lure the butterflies in the garden to her, and the domestic animals obeyed her as if they reasoned. Robert had been given a pure-blooded bulldog of a rare breed, which tolerated no interference from any person except him or his mother, and which would allow no familiarity with her on the part of strangers; so that when a neighbor came in he was not permitted to shake hands with her, for the dog at once showed his teeth. Not even her husband was allowed to take the slightest liberty with her in the dog's presence, and when Robert was more familiar with her than the dog thought proper he showed his teeth to him. They one day put him to a severe test, Robert putting his arm around his mother's neck as they sat side by side at the table. The dog went round behind them, and, putting his feet upon the chair, lifted Robert's arm off her shoulder with his nose, giving an intimation that he would not permit any liberty of that kind even from him. They had a favorite cat, to which the dog had the usual antipathy of dogs, and one day he chased her under a cupboard, and, unable to reach her, kept her there besieged and unable to escape, till Mrs. Browning intervened and gave the dog a lecture, in which she told him of their attachment for the cat, and charged him never to molest her more. If the creature had understood speech he could not have obeyed better; for from that time he was never known to molest the cat, and she, taking her revenge for past tyranny, bore herself most insolently with him, and when she scratched him over the head he only whimpered and turned away, as if to avoid temptation. An injury to one of his feet made an operation necessary, and the family surgeon was called in to perform it, but found him so savage that he could not touch the foot or approach him. Mrs. Browning came and talked to him in her way, and the dog submitted at once, without a whimper, to the painful operation. She had been long dead when I knew the family.

We had planned to go together—the elder Browning, Robert and Mrs. Browning, Miss Browning, my wife, and myself—to pass the summer at Fontainebleau, and we were awaiting the arrival of Robert and his wife from Florence when the news came of Mrs. Browning's illness, followed not much later by that of her death. The intrusion even of a friend was too much for this catastrophe, and we saw little more of the Brownings until years after, when other and many changes of fortune had come over us, and we met again in Italy.

Out of a quiet and happy life in Normandy I was aroused by the complications of our Civil War. An intimate friend living in Paris, the late Colonel W.B. Greene, a graduate of West Point, had applied for the command of a regiment of Massachusetts troops, and offered me a position on his staff if he got it and I would come. We agreed to go together, but his impatience carried him away, and he sailed without giving me notice. I followed by the next steamer, and, leaving my wife with my parents, I went on to Washington and to Greene's headquarters. I was too late for Greene, and I could not pass the medical examination, which was then very rigid, for all the North was volunteering. "Go home," said Greene; "we have already buried all the men like you. We have not seen the enemy yet, and we have buried six per cent. of the regiment. It is no place for you." But I had no choice; there were 800,000 men enlisted, and further enlistments were countermanded. I tried to get some position with Burnside,—who was fitting out an expedition to North Carolina,—even as cook; for I could not pass for the rank and file, and Burnside, as a friend of my friends in Rhode Island, might, I thought, help me. He replied that he had already nine applications for every post at his disposal. As a last resource, I went up into the Adirondacks to raise a company of sharpshooters. My backwoodsmen were all ready to go, but they wanted special rifles and special organization, for they meant to go to "shoot secesh," not to be regular infantry. Their ambition was not reconcilable with the plans of the military authorities, so that the company was never raised, and I then turned to my plan for the consulate.

I suppose that there are few now living who knew by personal investigation and remember clearly the condition of the country at that epoch. We had suffered the defeat of Bull Run, and the country at large was in a state of flaming patriotism; but sober people had many doubts whether the government was strong enough to carry through the plans of the President, and he also had, I was told by some one who knew him, been very uncertain whether the population at large would respond, even when he made the first call for 75,000 volunteers. Persons in positions of great influence were of the opinion that the North had no right to coerce the South. General Scott, the commander-in-chief, urged separation peacefully, and Horace Greeley, the most influential member of the press in the country, opposed coercion, while the mass of the Democratic party were either on the fence or openly in favor of the South, and this opposition of the Democrats was probably what gave Lincoln the most serious consideration. Some of the most earnest and patriotic people I knew had grave doubts if the Northern people had any conception of the work they had undertaken, and if they would be constant when they came to realize it.

While I was in Washington I saw Lincoln and some of those around him, and my opinion is that, but for his faith in the Supreme Providence and in the destiny of our Republic, his courage, and with it the whole scheme of defense, would have broken down. Future generations will not understand the difficulties before him,—perhaps he himself did not. The administration of Buchanan had prepared for the secession, and Buchanan as minister to England had already established the opinion of the governing class in that country in the certainty of impending separation,—a fact which should be remembered when we judge the attitude of England; the fleet had been dispersed to the ends of the earth, and the officers of the army were mainly Southerners. The support of New York and Massachusetts was of the gravest importance. The former was largely under the influence of Seward, and he was inclined by nature to conciliation; in the latter State, General Butler, a Democrat, and of seriously questioned loyalty, had an influence which might easily become the dominant one and carry the State over to the Democratic opposition, which was in the country at large distinctly opposed to coercion. The government and the ruling class in England were clearly hostile to the North, and the position on that side was menacing.

Had the South then been content with separation on the lines of "Mason and Dixon's line," I am convinced that it would have taken place without a struggle, if the position could have been defined without bloodshed. But this was what the most sagacious of the Southern leaders did not desire. It became evident that the majority in the South did not desire separation, and the leaders knew that a peaceful separation would be followed by reconstruction on something like the old lines, for the South could not stand alone industrially; so that they had not concealed their determination to invade the Middle and Western States, and carry them forcibly over to the new Confederacy, "leaving out New England." It was generally known that Pennsylvania and New Jersey were Democratic and lukewarm for the old Union, and that Ohio and the West would not resist if there were a successful beginning of a movement and a military invasion. So far as the sentiments of the politicians were concerned, the South had a very correct idea of the probabilities of the situation; what they were utterly ignorant of was the spirit of the masses in the North, which they thought to coerce easily. There they were mistaken, and there Lincoln saw his strength, and that saved the country; for, with the firing on Fort Sumter and the open insult to the flag, the Northern masses took fire, and the conflagration burned out the roots of sympathy for the South. Butler was given a command in the field; others of the same class were given commands, and the dangerous demagogue class was enlisted for the war.

When I landed, the entire able-bodied population of the North was seeking to enlist, and the troops were pouring by thousands into Washington, and only the most uncertain and prudent of the Northern leaders doubted of victory, though no one dreamed what it would cost. And, looking at the corruption of American politics to-day, the venality and the indifference to the true interests of the nation of most of the men who control the political life at its most important centres, and the general tendency of our politics, it needs a serene and far-reaching faith in human progress to enable a citizen of the United States, who believes in a political ideal, to regard the sacrifices then made as having been profitable. I see things dispassionately and as an old man removed from the chance of personal gains or losses, and, but for a faith in human progress being the result of an eternal and inevitable law, I should say that the blood of that war had been wasted. It is a painful conviction to die with,—but I expect to die with it,—that generations and unparalleled disasters must pass before my country reaches the goal its founders believed to be its destiny.

Having exhausted every appliance to open a way into the army, I made my appeal to Dr. Nott, and received by return of the Washington post my commission as consul at Rome, as I have told in a previous chapter. I went on to Cambridge to get information and advice, and, at Lowell's, met Howells for the first time. We could, each of us, offer condolence for the other's disappointment; for Howells had asked for Dresden and was appointed to Venice, while I had asked for Venice, intending to write the history of Venetian art. But Rome had always been given to an artist; and, though there was no salary, but fees only, it seemed to have been a much-sought-for position, and I accepted.

Leaving my wife at home, for her confinement, I sailed for England, en route for Italy, just when the capture of Mason and Slidell had thrown the country into a new agitation; for it was foreseen that England would not submit to this disrespect to her flag, though the step was in strict accordance with her own precedents. Seward and the more prudent part of the public were in favor of releasing the prisoners at once, and before any demand could be made by the English government; but it was said that Lincoln and the West were in favor of holding them, and letting England do her worst. It is possible that he thought that a foreign enemy would decide all the wavering minds, and possibly open the way to a pacification between the North and South. I left New York before we had heard of the reception of the news in England, and found the agitation there intense. The consul at Liverpool told me that he could not go into the Exchange for the insults offered him there, and American merchants were insulted on the street. In London, at the restaurants where I dined, the conversation turned altogether on the incident, and the language was most violent.

As I was in the service of the government I waited on Mr. Adams, the minister, and remained in London until the question was settled, in daily communication with him. He thought the danger of war still great, as Lincoln had not decided to accept the ultimatum, and the English ministry was, in Adams's opinion, desirous of having a casus belli, or at least a justification for recognizing the Southern Confederacy. That war had not already become inevitable he considered due entirely to the attitude of the Queen, who resisted any measure calculated to precipitate a hostile solution, and had refused her assent to a dispatch demanding the release of the envoys, and worded in such peremptory terms that Lincoln could not have hesitated to repel it at any cost,—an outcome which, in the opinion of Mr. Adams, was what Palmerston, Gladstone, and Lord John Russell wanted. But, on the insistence of the Queen, the offensive passage was struck out, and peace was preserved, though at that moment the reply of our government had not been received, and Adams did not consider that, even in its modified form, the demand of the English ministry might not be rejected. As the crisis was still undecided, I waited until the solution was definite. The favorable reply came by the next steamer. To the peace-loving heart of the Queen mainly, and next to the tact and diplomatic ability of Mr. Adams, the world owes that the war most disastrous possible for the civilization of the west was avoided. Put at rest with regard to this danger, I continued my journey and entered upon my functions as representative of my government at Rome.

I have since heard various versions of this crisis and its solution, but the above is, I believe, substantially the truth. I have heard that the English dispatch was referred to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that he advised against it; but this is impossible. The Emperor of France was more determined even than Palmerston to destroy the United States, if possible, as his Mexican enterprise showed, and we knew from other sources that he was pressing the English government to recognize the belligerency of the South. Day by day I heard from Mr. Adams of the position, and he said to me emphatically that he did not consider the declaration of war impossible until he received the reply of Lincoln to the English ultimatum; and it is impossible that such a transaction as that of the consultation with the French government should have taken place without Adams knowing of it, for his information from the surroundings of the Queen was minute and incessant. He said to me, without the slightest qualification, that the preservation of peace was due solely to the insistence of the Queen, strengthened by the advice of Prince Albert, on the demand for the release of the envoys being made in terms which should not offend the amour propre of the North.



CHAPTER XIX

MY ROMAN CONSULATE

The convenient road from London to Rome, when I went there as consul, was via Paris to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Civita Vecchia. It was December when I left London, and the journey from Paris to Marseilles, in a third-class carriage, took twenty-six hours. The Mont Cenis tunnel had not been opened yet, and the voyage by diligence was tedious, costly, and at that season uncomfortable on account of the cold. I arrived at Rome shortly before Christmas, when the city was astir with the preparations for the great ceremonies which were then the principal attraction for foreigners there, but the number of visitors was very small compared with that which now gathers to their diminished religious and spectacular interest. The foreign quarter was limited to that immediately about the Piazza di Spagna, and only the artist folk lived in the remoter quarters, where they found cheap and commodious apartments in the palaces of fallen nobility, glad to let their upper stories; and there were few or no new houses.

Rome was given up to art and religion; it was still decaying, picturesque, pathetic, and majestic. Where now we find the prosperous and hideous new quarters,—the Via Nazionale, and the expanse of structures to the east of it, the region between the Coliseum and the Lateran, the 20 Settembre, Via Veneto, and the vicinity where were the Ludovisi gardens, and now are long streets of ugly houses, with the entirely new quarter of the Prati, were then expanses of vineyards and gardens, and we used to cross the Tiber by a ferry to visit the farm of Cincinnatus, now buried under twenty feet of rubbish, on which are built the palaces of the Prati, huge, ugly barracks; and even the Campagna has lost much of its desolate beauty. Down the Tiber, where the ghastly embankment walls in the yellow stream, there was then a picturesque riverbank, with a delightful foreground in every rood of it. Where now is the Piazza delle Terme and the great railway station, we used to go to get studies of the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, one of the most picturesque objects of the region.

Political or social life there was none, and the foreign element, whether the regular or the transitory, was divided by its nationalities, and cut off absolutely from the Roman. Only the English and American mingled to any extent, the foreign Catholics finding their way, with such Protestants as gave hope of conversion, into the clerical world, which, from all that I could see of it, offered little attraction to the fugitive visitors. Wide-eyed, hurried Americans came, saw, and bought a picture, and went away again; English sightseers came for Christmas or Easter, and bought a few old masters; but the mass of those who stayed for long were invalids, who settled down and tried to keep as much in the sun as possible, for the universal belief then was that to live out of the sunshine was to contract mortal malaria. It was the most unreal world I have ever lived in, whether we use the word unreal in the sense of shadowy or poetical.

Rome was in fact at that time a spectacle never before or since seen in the world. Ruled by an absolute government, theocratic and therefore considering its authority beyond all human attack, but besieged on all sides by an invading liberalism, which had already captured all its outposts and undermined its position at the centre, it, still defiant, refused to make a single concession to the spirit of the epoch, and bade defiance to diplomacy and insurrection alike. All its former allies from north and south were in refuge within the walls of the city, the King of Naples and all his court offering the daily spectacle of a parade of their downfall as they drove through the streets. Rome itself was a huge cloister in which the only animation was in the processions of priests and students of the theological seminaries, or the more melancholy funerals in which the hooded and gowned friars added gloom to the mystery of our common lot,—no industry except those of jewelry and art and that of ecclesiastical apparatus. The principal revenues were the charity of the outside world,—St. Peter's pence. Government was not by law, but by the arbitrary decisions of the most incompetent of officials, enforced by the bayonets of a foreign army, the soldiers of which despised the population, and lived in the most complete separation from it. The Pope himself had little affection for his French protectorate, which urged, and sometimes effected, certain improvements which he regarded as innovations and invasions.

I had, soon after my arrival, a case before the lower tribunal which showed how the administration of justice was regarded. Having a relapse into the malady that had followed my breakdown in Switzerland, which was exaggerated by the heat of Rome, I was ordered by my physician to Ariccia to recruit, and I left my apartment, which was also the consulate, and took quarters at the little Ariccian inn which was the resort of the artists at that date.

As I could not absent myself from the office longer than ten days at a time without permission of the government at Washington, I had to return pro forma at that term, when, to my surprise, I found my apartment in possession of a stranger. I intimated his dislodging, to which he replied that he had taken the rooms and paid his rent and would not go. At that time there was a temporary occupation—merely nominal, however—of the legation by ex-Governor Randall of Wisconsin. The minister had taken an apartment where he could mount the arms of the Republic, and had then gone off on his European tour, leaving me in occupation of the post as charge d'affaires and in care of his rooms. As I had thus another place to sleep in, I evacuated the consular quarters not unwillingly, removing all my effects except a set of silver spoons which my mother had given me on my leaving home, and which were heirlooms. The spoons were being cleaned, the landlady said, and would be ready the next day. I called for them again, and was again deferred, when I went at once to the tribunal and made a claim for my spoons. On statement of the case, the judge gave an order for the immediate and unconditional delivery of the plate; but when I went to get them at the tribunal, he said it was lucky for me that I came when I did, as the landlady had come in the afternoon and applied for an order against me to pay another month's rent (always paid in advance), and that if she had come first he should have been obliged to give it to her. I explained that I had been driven out of the apartment by another occupant; but that, he said, made no difference, the first applicant for justice would alone have been heard.

Not long after, a similar case called for my more or less official recognition. My colleague the consul at Florence had come for a visit to Rome, and had taken a cab to make the rounds of the sights, and, making his visit to the church of Ara Coeli, he of course left the cab at the foot of the stairs. He found little which interested him in the church, and, returning sooner than the cabman expected, he found no cab there. In the course of the day he went to the police court and asked for a punishment for the cabman for having deserted him on his round. The cabman was summoned and fined accordingly; but the magistrate remarked to my friend when he came to give evidence that it was fortunate for him that he complained first, for the cabman had come later in the day and asked for his fare for the night which he had passed at the foot of the stairs waiting for the return of the forestiero; and he added that if the cabman had come first, my friend would have been obliged to pay the claim. It was simple and expeditious, first come being first served, but hardly good civil administration.

At the time of the expedition of Garibaldi which ended at Aspromonte, the excitement in the city was intense, and the panic on the part of the ecclesiastical population so great that they mainly took refuge in the convents and villages of the mountain country. I had occasion to see the Pope at that time, and found him in profound despondency, evidently persuaded that Garibaldi would come to Rome. He said to me that he was convinced that the great day of tribulation prophesied for the church had come, and it would have its fifty years of oppression, after which it would arise again more glorious than ever; but there was no question that in his mind the French garrison was not for the moment an efficient protection. The Italian party in the city was very small, but active, and in those days especially so. The priests were insulted and menaced whenever it was possible to reach them covertly, and finally one was stabbed in a crowd. Many arrests were made, and amongst those arrested was an exile who had ventured into the city to visit his friends. He was put on trial for the stabbing, and, though he proved an alibi, he was condemned to death, for "some example must be made," they said. There was not the slightest evidence against him except that he was an exile who had no right to be in the city, and he was executed. Every day the police had to obliterate rebellious inscriptions from the walls, and a constant correspondence was kept up with the patriots in Florence. To belong to the order of Freemasons was punishable by death, but a lodge was in full activity, and when Lincoln was assassinated it sent me, for his widow, a letter of condolence. It was given me by Castellani, who, not being initiated, had received it from a brother known to him. About the same time, the revolutionary committee decided to contribute a stone from the agger of Servius Tullius to the Washington monument at Washington, and got out one of the largest, had it dressed and appropriately inscribed, and forwarded it to Leghorn for shipment to America, the bill of lading being sent to me for transmission.

The police regulations were extremely severe against heresy, but brigandage was common, and the darker streets were unsafe at night to strangers. People were not infrequently robbed in their own doorways, and there was a recognized system of violent robbery known as "doorway robbing." The streets were very badly lighted, and the entrance halls on the ground floor were scarcely ever lighted, so that we always carried wax tapers to light ourselves up to our rooms, or to visit our friends. Incautious foreigners, ignorant of this need for precaution, entering the dark passages, were sometimes seized by robbers hidden behind the door, gagged, and stripped of all valuables without a possibility of assistance unless a friend happened to enter the house at the moment, for the police were never seen about the streets at night. I had, in the second year of my residence, a very narrow escape from capture by brigands, which might have been a serious matter. I was making, with my wife and son, our villeggiatura at Porto d'Anzio, then a miserable fishing village, but, except Civita Vecchia, the only convenient seaside locality in the States of the Church where one could find lodgings. With an American lady friend staying with us, we planned to make an excursion by boat to the Punta d'Astura, where are the ruins of a villa of Cicero; but when half way there we were driven back by a passing shower. On the same day a party of Roman sportsmen, out quail shooting, were "held up" in the ruins and obliged to pay a ransom of five thousand scudi. The brigands of the kingdom of Naples were constantly given refuge and sustenance on our side the frontier, and on a visit to Olevano, in the Sabine hills, I was witness of a band of over two hundred taking refuge from the Italian troops in the Papal territory, and being furnished with provisions and refreshments as at a festa. Artists out sketching were never molested, not because the Papal influence protected us, but because the brigands knew their poverty, and had a tinge of sympathy with the arts.

The ecclesiastical authorities were so severe on heresy that a friend of mine, who had married an English lady who remained a Protestant, was brought before the Inquisition (the "Holy Office") and put under the severest pressure to compel his wife to abstain from attending the English church outside the Porta del Popolo. He escaped ulterior consequences only by appealing to the French authorities, he being a surgeon in the service of the French garrison. For common morality there was little care. The sexual relations were flagrantly loose, and the scandal even of some of the great dignitaries was widespread. Antonelli's amours were the subject of common gossip, and most of the parish priests were in undisguised marital relations with their housekeepers; nor was this considered as at all to their discredit by the population at large. One of the leading Liberals, permitted to remain in the city on account of the importance of his industry, one of the great goldsmiths' works, told me that the Liberals never permitted the priests to frequent their houses, as they invariably conspired to corrupt the newly married women, unmarried girls being unmolested. In the lower circles of the bourgeoisie it was a matter of common knowledge that the husbands openly made a traffic of the virtue of their wives; and in my personal acquaintance amongst the artists, I knew of a number of cases in which the artist had the wife as a mistress for a fixed compensation to the husband.

For this kind of immorality the police had no eyes, and, admitting enormous exaggeration in the common report of the conduct of the younger priesthood and the students of the theological schools (and there is no smoke without some fire), the conditions of morality amongst the younger Italian clergy was a gross scandal. Houses of ill-fame were notorious, and it used to be said that when Pius IX. was urged by the French authorities to put them under control and license he replied that "every house was a brothel, and it was useless to license any." There was another saying which I heard often, that "if you wanted to go to a brothel you must go in the daytime, for at night they were full of priests." How far this was justified I do not know, but I remember that two American acquaintances went one night to one of the best recognized houses of the kind, a place of the most common notoriety on the Corso, and they were told at the door that there was no room,—"every place was occupied."

Let me not be charged with making of this state of things an accusation against the Catholic religion. The English, Irish, and American students, who were those with whom I principally came in contact, were ardent and enthusiastic devotees, as earnest in their religious observances as any of the most devoted members of any other church I have known. Indeed, it is my personal experience that so far as regards the younger men, I have never found so many animated by the true apostolical spirit as amongst the students of theology of British and American birth whom I then knew at Rome. At the head of all the Catholics of all nations whom I have ever known are the English, in respect of sincere and ardent devotion to their church, with the minimum of animosity towards other creeds, and the most healthy morality. With the great majority of Italian ecclesiastics, on the contrary, religion is a mere formality, and its influence on the life is inconsiderable and unconsidered. It was, therefore, not because it was a Catholic city that the morality of Rome was so low, but because the energies of the hierarchy were so occupied with the difficulties of the position of a government of priests unused to civil administration and by their own education disqualified for it, that the ordinary functions of government were impossible to it. The situation was made still worse by the Italian constitutional indifference to questions of common morality. As the government of the church lies in the hands of the Italian clergy, it will be forever impossible for a government organized on the principles of the Papal temporal power to be other than that which has been suppressed by Italy. To the majority of the higher Italian ecclesiastics, the church has become merely a political instrument, into the management of which the spiritual interests of the people do not enter, and the efforts of the Catholics of other countries to bring about a reform will never succeed while the power is in the hands of the Italian clergy, which it will be as long as the Papacy is an Italian institution; and as the Pope is Pope merely because he is the Bishop of Rome, it is difficult to see how the situation can be made different.

Pius IX. was personally a most sincere and devout, though worldly, man, and it is difficult to believe that any other than a devotee could now be elected to the Holy See, for even the most corrupt civil or ecclesiastical intellect must see the importance of a reputation for sanctity in the Pontiff, while, as the influence of the Papacy is no longer of vital importance to the government of any country in the world (though doubtless of considerable utility to several), there is little political importance in the personality of the Pontiff, and slight motive for foreign governments to exercise influence on the election. If removed from Italy and established in a seat surrounded by a population like that of the masses in France (out of Paris and the large cities), amenable to purely spiritual influences, the church would revert to its normal functions and abandon politics,—a result never to be hoped for while it remains Italian. I have no sympathy with its creed, or any other of the creeds, for I conceive no healthy conformity of belief possible to men and women differing in intellectual and spiritual capacities; but I have seen good work done by the Catholic church in many quarters, and I have many and admirable Catholic friends, and, to be frank, I do not believe that the creed makes much difference in the religion.

As to Pius IX., I am convinced that he was not only a devout man, but an excellent and admirable man, as men go, a genuine believer in the divine direction of his pontificate, and incapacitated for civil government simply because no one could carry on a civil government on ecclesiastical principles. He loved his people, and, personally and generally, was beloved by them; but the progress of liberalism and democracy had driven out of the Papal States, or into a mute and inflexible opposition, all the most active and potent intellects amongst them, and the clergy without them could not administer the government; so that, wishing to do good to his subjects, he could not improve their political condition without inviting those elements of liberalism which he considered the inexorable enemies of the church, which was to him the highest interest of humanity, He reposed his faith on the abilities of clerics who knew nothing of human nature or practical politics, but comprehended only a paternal control, absolute, and to be enforced by the rod, actual or figurative; or on those of civilian devotees and fanatics less intelligent even than the clerical functionaries.

As I was, for the greater part of my term, in charge of the legation interests and duties, I saw Pius IX. often and liked him much. One day when I was having an audience in his little room, the windows of which looked west, there came up a great thunder storm, with frequent flashes of lightning, at each of which he crossed himself and devoutly said a prayer. His conversation convinced me that he felt profoundly convinced of his divinely appointed function as the vicegerent of God on earth, and his sincerity inspired me with great respect for the man; but, naturally, with little for his intellect. His bonhomie was remarkable, and he had a keen sense of humor, which led him to make sarcastic, and often telling remarks, on men and things, in which he was sometimes the reverse of diplomatic. He had, for my advantage, many jibes at our past ministers, of some of whom he had diverting memories, and especially of Major Cass,—of whom he always spoke as "quel Cass," who had curious habits of night wandering and adventure seeking, or, as Pius put it, "could not be quiet of nights." Either he or his predecessor, I forget which, had insisted on putting his horse through a ride round the parapet of the Pincian balustrade, where a slip or a yielding stone meant death to the rider, which might have been of no importance, but to the horse also, which would have been a pity. And the old man liked a sly thrust at any of us who had made a blunder.

While thus in charge of the diplomatic relations of my government without its recognition, the Department sent out a chaplain, an ex-chaplain of the House of Representatives, who, having served his time in that capacity, was entitled to a vacation in Europe, and came with recommendations to me. Protestant worship was forbidden within the walls of Rome, but to induce the English Protestants to come to Rome and spend their money there, they were allowed to worship in a sort of warehouse outside the Porta del Popolo. This was repugnant to our democratic ways, and the new chaplain insisted on having his chapel inside the walls. So I "put on cheek" and hired in the name of the legation an apartment with a huge reception room close to the Piazza di Spagna, put up the arms of the United States of America, and opened the reception room for public worship as the chapel of the legation,—the first instance in recorded time of Protestant worship in the Papal city. The sequel was amusing, for as Sunday was my only holiday, and I always spent it on the Campagna, the chaplain cut me dead for not attending his services and keeping Sunday.

I expected some admonitory allusion to this achievement when next I saw the Pope, but no notice was ever taken of it either by the superior or the lower authorities, and so far as I know the church of my planting flourished as long as the city remained under the Papal rule, but with no more of my watering. The Pope was, I am persuaded, quite indifferent to it, for, devout and unquestioning believer in his own divine authority as he was, he was not a bigot, and not of a persecuting disposition, but he was only a part of an immense and intricate machine, over the movements of which neither he nor any other Pope could have much control. He had every possible disposition to be that ideal ruler, a benevolent despot, but even in that little realm the details of government were impossible of control by the most competent head of a government; they were necessarily left to the incompetent, bigoted, and zealous administrators chosen by the secondary chiefs of the departments, all the most conservative of men, with a reverence for the abuses and usages of the old regime. It was personal government down to the lowest grade of responsibility. The Pope presided and bore the responsibility of the proceedings, but Antonelli was the real ruler of the States of the Church.

And Antonelli was the very impersonation of unscrupulous and malignant intellect, subtle with all the Italian subtlety, and unscrupulous as any of the brigands from the community in which he had his origin. He was in those days a cardinal of the order of deacons, and only in his later career a priest, which fact is sometimes made the excuse for his frank and notorious disregard of the rule of chastity, nor did he seem to be concerned that his amours were the common gossip of Rome. I was one day in his anteroom waiting for an audience when a lady came to visit him, and when she was announced he flew to receive her with the ardor of a boy in love, and with such open and passionate expressions of affection as could be seen only in a southern nature. But he had none of the slowness of action or decision which we attribute sometimes to the languor of tropical natures. In business, as in love, he lost no time, and never was at a loss for his expedient, but came at once to a decision, and gave it on the spot. When the cruise of the Alabama gave rise to diplomatic correspondence, and our government protested against her receiving such treatment from neutrals as would facilitate her career, I was, amongst my colleagues under similar obligations, charged to protest against her being admitted to the privileges of a national man-of-war in the port of Civita Vecchia. Antonelli replied to my communication of the protest that she would be admitted to the port with the same privileges as a man-of-war of any other nation, and the reply was given with almost explosive promptness and vivacity. But until a request for relaxation of the passport regulations in favor of Southerners was made by some one professing to speak on behalf of our own government, which was in my second year, he never permitted the least bending of them, and only in important cases, where strong personal influence was brought to bear, issued passports of the Foreign Office for Southern Americans to leave the city.

Antonelli had a face which gave one an idea of the expression "beaute du Diable," for a more perfect type of Satanic intelligence and malignity than it showed at times I cannot conceive. If I had been a figure painter, I should certainly have painted him as Mephistopheles, as he appeared in the audience room in his close-fitting purple costume with scarlet trimmings, his long coat-tails flying behind him when he moved like the fringe of a flame. He was the most curious contrast to the Pope, with his humorous and kindly manner, that it is possible to conceive, for the Cardinal was nothing if not sardonic and serious. The very slightest trace of humor would have transformed him completely.

Unique as was the government, so was the position of a consul. It had something of the exterritoriality of the same position in the Turkish empire. The arms of my government over my door were a protection against legal process, and I imagine that my predecessor had so employed it, for when I had my first clothes made the tailor refused to send them to the consulate till they were paid for. I had a right to carry arms and shoot anywhere in the territory of the Pope, and I had an absolute control over the passports, i.e. over the movements of my fellow citizens, for no one who had come to Rome with the passport of the United States of America could leave it without my visa, and I could sequestrate the passport whenever I saw fit. But on the part of my own government the consideration afforded was the minimum of its kind. I had no salary, and my compensation was in fees, viz. those on passports and the few invoices of goods sent to America, with such notarial business as might arise. The late consul had resigned, and gone home to fight for the Confederate cause, leaving the consulate in the hands of a French secretary, an old and needy teacher of his native language whenever he could find a pupil. He was satisfied with the pittance my own means allowed me to give him, and he wrote, in a much better French than mine would have been, the dispatches to the Vatican. I could talk French fluently if not correctly, and that sufficed. Before leaving Washington, I had received a hint from a friend in the Department of State that the fewer dispatches I troubled them with the higher would be my favor in the department, so that, with the exception of my quarterly accounts, I had little official writing to do; but when I came to Rome again in 1882, I was told by my successor of that date that my file of dispatches to the department was the only one which existed in the consular archives of the Papal occupation of Rome.