“This casual introduction of literary topics furnished us with ample matter for conversation while we were not engaged in contemplating the sublime ruins over which, when the sentinel returned, we climbed.  I asked him respecting the literature of Poland, and particularly if there were now any living poets of eminence.  He observed:  ’Yes, sir, I am happily travelling in company with the most celebrated of our poets, Meinenvitch’; and who, as I understood him, was one of the party walking in another part of the ruins.

“Engaged in conversation we left the Coliseum together and slowly proceeded into the city.  I told him of the deep interest with which Poland was regarded in the United States, and that her heroes were spoken of with the same veneration as our own.  As some evidence of this estimation I informed him of the monument erected by the cadets of West Point to the memory of Kosciusko.  With this intelligence he was evidently much affected; he took my hand and exclaimed with great enthusiasm and emphatically:  ’We, too, sir, shall be free; the time is coming; we too shall be free; my unhappy country will be free.’ (This was before the revolution in France.)

“As I came to the street where we were to part he took out his notebook, and, going under the lamp of a Madonna, near the Piazza Colonna, he wished me to write my name for him among the other names of Americans which he had treasured in his book.  I complied with his request.  In bidding me adieu he said:  ’It will be one of my happiest recollections of Rome that the last night which I passed in this city was passed in the Coliseum, and with an American, a citizen of a free country.  If you should ever visit Warsaw, pray enquire for Prince——­; I shall be exceedingly glad to see you.’

“Thus I parted with this interesting Pole.  That I should have forgotten a Polish name, pronounced but once, you will not think extraordinary.  The sequel remains to be told.  When the Polish revolution broke out, what was my surprise to find the poet Meinenvitch and a prince, whose name seemed like that which he pronounced to me, and to which was added—­’just returned from Italy’—­among the first members of the provisional government.”

Morse assured himself afterwards, and so noted it in his journal, that this chance acquaintance was Prince Michael Jerome Radziwill, who had served as lieutenant in the war of independence under Kosciusko; fought under Napoleon in Russia (by whom he was made a brigadier-general); and, shortly after the meeting in the Coliseum, was made general-in-chief of the Polish army.  After the defeat of this army he was banished to central Russia until 1836, when he retired to Dresden.

Reverting again to the notebooks, we find that Florence, with her wealth of beauty in architecture, sculpture, and painting, appealed strongly to the artist, and the notes are chiefly descriptions of what he sees, and which it will not be necessary to transcribe.  He had, during all the time he was in Italy, been completing, one after another, the copies for which he had received commissions, and had been sending them home.  He thus describes to his friend, Mr. Van Schaick, the paintings made for him:—­