“On returning we stopped to take tea at Mrs. Ireland’s lodgings, an English lady who is here with her two daughters, accomplished and highly agreeable people.  I was told by them that after I left Rome a most diabolical attempt was made to poison the English artists who had made a party to Grotto Ferrata.  They were mistaken by the persons who attempted the deed for Germans.  They all became exceedingly ill immediately after dinner, and, as the wine was the only thing they had taken there, having brought their food with them, it was suspected and a strong solution of copper was proved to be in it.  I was told that Messrs. Gibson and Desoulavy suffered a great deal, the latter being confined to his bed for three weeks.  Had I been in Rome it is more than probable I should have been of their party, for I had never visited Grotto Ferrata, and the company of those with whom I had associated would have induced me to join them without a doubt.”

Morse enjoyed his stay at Recoaro so much that he was persuaded by his hospitable friends to prolong his visit for a few days longer than he had planned, but, on July 27, he and his friend Mr. Ferguson bade adieu and proceeded on their journey.  Verona and Brescia were visited and on July 29 they came to Milan.  The cathedral he finds “a most gorgeous building, far exceeding my conception of it”; and of the beautiful street of the Corso Porta Orientale he says:  “It is wider than Broadway and as superior as white marble palaces are to red brick houses.  There is an opinion prevalent among some of our good citizens that Broadway is not only the longest and widest, but the most superbly built, street in the world.  The sooner they are undeceived the better.  Broadway is a beautiful street, a very beautiful street, but it is absurd to think that our brick houses of twenty-five feet front, with plain doors and windows, built by contract in two or three months, and holding together long enough to be let, can rival the spacious stone palaces of hundreds of feet in length, with lofty gates and balconied windows, and their foundations deeply laid and slowly constructed to last for ages.”  This was, of course, when Broadway even below Fourteenth Street, was a residence street.

Attending service in the cathedral on Sunday, and being, as usual, wearied by the monotony and apparent insincerity of it all, he again gives vent to his feelings:—­

“How admirably contrived is every part of the structure of this system to take captive the imagination.  It is a religion of the imagination; all the arts of the imagination are pressed into its service; architecture, painting, sculpture, music, have lent all their charm to enchant the senses and impose on the understanding by substituting for the solemn truths of God’s Word, which are addressed to the understanding, the fictions of poetry and the delusions of feeling.  The theatre is a daughter of this prolific mother of abominations, and a child worthy of its dam.  The lessons of morality are pretended to be taught by both, and much in the same way, by scenic effect and pantomime, and the fruits are much the same.