“I don’t know what to do about writing letters for the ’Journal of Commerce.’  I fear it will consume more of my time than the thing is worth, and will be such a hindrance to my professional studies that I must, on the whole, give up the thought of it.  My time here is worth a guinea a minute in the way of my profession.  I could undoubtedly write some interesting letters for them, but I do not feel the same ease in writing for the public that I do in writing to a friend, and, in correcting my language for the press, I feel that it is going to consume more of my time than I can spare.  I will write if I can, but they must not expect it, for I find my pen and pencil are enemies to each other.  I must write less and paint more.  My advantages for study never appeared so great, and I never felt so ardent a desire to improve them.”

Morse spent about two weeks in Paris visiting churches, picture galleries, palaces, and other show places.  He finds the giraffe or camelopard the most interesting animal at the Jardin des Plantes, and he dislikes a ceiling painted by Gros:  “It is allegorical, which is a class of painting I detest.”  He deplores the Continental Sunday:  “Oh! that we appreciated in America the value of our Sabbath; a Sabbath of rest from labor; a Sabbath of moral and religious instruction; a Sabbath the greatest barrier to those floods of immorality which have in times past deluged this devoted country in blood, and will again do it unless the Sabbath gains its ascendancy once more.”

From an undated and unfinished draft of a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Roby, we learn something of his journey from Paris to Rome, or rather of the first part of it:—­

“I wrote you from Paris giving you an account of my travels to that city, and I now improve the first moments of leisure since to continue my journal.  After getting our passports signed by at least half a dozen ambassadors preparatory to our long journey, we left Paris on Wednesday, January 13, at eight o’clock, for Dijon, in the diligence.  The weather was very cold, and we travelled through a very uninteresting country.  It seemed like a frozen ocean, the road being over an immense plain unbroken by trees or fences.

“We stopped a few moments at Melun, at Joigny and Tonnerre, which latter place was quite pretty with a fine-looking Gothic church.  We found the villages from Paris thus far much neater and in better style than those on the road from Boulogne.

“Our company consisted of Mr. Town, of New York, Mr. Jocelyn, of New Haven, a very pretty Frenchwoman, and myself.  The Frenchwoman was quite a character; she could not talk English nor could we talk French, and yet we were talking all the time, and were able to understand and be understood.