The Acropolis book, published privately, cleared for me about $1000.  Moreover, difficulties had arisen over the will of my brother, with which none of the parties interested were contented, and so, by a compromise, the family received a part, of which, after the deduction of my drafts from Rome, accepted before his death, there came to me $500.  Hence I was, after my straits, at comparative ease for the moment.  One of the most generous friends my vagabond past had given me, the late J.M.  Forbes of Boston, gave me a commission for a landscape, and I returned to my painting, living in a tent in the Glen of the White Mountains near to the subject chosen.  Here I received a visit from Agassiz, and here we had our last meeting and conversation on nature and art.  But the long abstention from painting had left me half paralyzed—­the hand had always been too far behind the theory.  I now began to question if I had any vocation that way, and, with the passing of the summer, I went back to literature and found a place on the old “Scribner’s Monthly,” now “The Century,” under Dr. Holland, the most friendly of chiefs, and there I had as colleague Mr. Gilder, the present editor of the magazine.  The greatest mistake, from the business point of view, I have ever made was in leaving the collaboration with Dr. Holland.

CHAPTER XXIV

ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS

Of a life so desultory, fragmentary rather, it is useless to keep the chronology.  At no period of it have I been able to direct it with primary reference to pecuniary considerations, nor have I ever succeeded in anything I undertook with primary reference to pecuniary return.  My impulses, erratic or otherwise, have always been too strong for a coherent and well subordinated career, and the aimlessness of my early life, favored by the indulgence of my brother and the fondness of my mother, might well account for a life without a practical aim or gain.  It is too near its end for regrets or reparation—­so that if it ends well it will be well, but it is hardly fitted for systematic record.

During the two years between my leaving Crete and Athens and my second marriage I spent the larger part of my life in London, engaged in literary pursuits and in fugitive work.  I prepared the history of the Cretan insurrection, but the dissolution of the publishing company which undertook it left the actual publication to Henry Holt & Co. in 1874.  All interest in the subject having long lapsed, it was hardly noticed, and was as a publication a complete failure, but I sent copies of it to some English friends who were interested in Greek affairs, and amongst others to Professor Max Müller, who made an extended review of it for the “Times,” which had on my subsequent career an important influence.  During the time I spent in England I naturally saw a great deal of the Rossettis, especially of Dante, with whom I became intimate.  He lived in Cheyne