ROUSSEAU.

To the actually so-called Chamber of Deputies, I was indebted for a sight of the manuscripts of Rousseau treasured in their library.  I saw them and touched them,—­those manuscripts just as he has celebrated them, written on the fine white paper, tied with ribbon.  Yellow and faded age has made them, yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century.  He was the precursor of all we most prize.  True, his blood was mixed with madness, and the course of his actual life made some detours through villanous places; but his spirit was intimate with the fundamental truths of human nature, and fraught with prophecy.  There is none who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold; they are too present with us; but he who thinks really must often think with Rousseau, and learn him ever more and more.  Such is the method of genius,—­to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.

TO R.W.E.

Naples, March 15, 1847.—­Mickiewicz, the Polish poet, first introduced the Essays to acquaintance in Paris.  I did not meet him anywhere, and, as I heard a great deal of him which charmed me, I sent him your poems, and asked him to come and see me.  He came, and I found in him the man I had long wished to see, with the intellect and passions in due proportion for a full and healthy human being, with a soul constantly inspiring.  Unhappily, it was a very short time before I came away.  How much time had I wasted on others which I might have given to this real and important relation.

After hearing music from Chopin and Neukomm, I quitted Paris on the 25th February, and came, via Chalons, Lyons, Avignon, (where I waded through melting snow to Laura’s tomb,) Arles, to Marseilles; thence, by steamer, to Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa.  Seen through a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view of Genoa, failed to charm.  Only at Naples have I found my Italy.  Between Leghorn and Naples, our boat was run into by another, and we only just escaped being drowned.

ROME.

Rome, May, 1847.—­Of the fragments of the great time, I have now seen nearly all that are treasured up here.  I have as yet nothing of consequence to say of them.  Others have often given good hints as to how they look.  As to what they are, it can only be known by approximating to the state of soul out of which they grew.  They are many and precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for.  They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western Prairies.  Yet I love much to see the galleries of marbles, even where there are not many separately admirable, amid