A former Consul at ——­, whom I know, has told me a good many stories about the pieces of popular mind which he received at different times from the travelling public, in reproof of his difficulty of discovery; and I think it must be one of the most jealously guarded rights of American citizens in foreign lands to declare the national representative hard to find, if there is no other complaint to lodge against him.  It seems to be, in peculiar degree, a quality of consulship at ——­, to be found remote and inaccessible.  My friend says that even at New York, before setting out for his post, when inquiring into the history of his predecessors, he heard that they were one and all hard to find; and he relates that on the steamer, going over, there was a low fellow who set the table in a roar by a vulgar anecdote to this effect:—­

“There was once a consul at ——­, who indicated his office-hours by the legend on his door, ‘In from ten to one.’  An old ship-captain, who kept coming for about a week without finding the Consul, at last furiously wrote, in the terms of wager, under this legend, ’Ten to one you’re out!’”

My friend also states that one day a visitor of his remarked:  “I’m rather surprised to find you in.  As a general rule, I never do find consuls in.”  Habitually, his fellow-countrymen entertained him with accounts of their misadventures in reaching him.  It was useless to represent to them that his house was in the most convenient locality in ——­, where, indeed, no stranger can walk twenty rods from his hotel without losing himself; that their guide was an ass, or their courier a rogue.  They listened to him politely, but they never pardoned him in the least; and neither will I forgive the Consul at Genoa.  I had no earthly consular business with him, but a private favor to ask.  It was Sunday, and I could not reasonably expect to find him at his office, or any body to tell me where he lived; but I have seldom had so keen a sense of personal wrong and national neglect as in my search for that Consul’s house.

In Italy there is no species of fact with which any human being you meet will not pretend to have perfect acquaintance, and, of course, the driver whose fiacre we took professed himself a complete guide to the Consul’s whereabouts, and took us successively to the residences of the consuls of all the South American republics.  It occurred to me that it might be well to inquire of these officials where their colleague was to be found; but it is true that not one consul of them was at home!  Their doors were opened by vacant old women, in whom a vague intelligence feebly guttered, like the wick of an expiring candle, and who, after feigning to throw floods of light on the object of my search, successively flickered out, and left me in total darkness.

Till that day, I never knew of what lofty flights stairs were capable.  As out-of-doors, in Genoa, it is either all up or down hill, so in-doors it is either all up or down stairs.  Ascending and descending, in one palace after another, those infinite marble steps, it became a question not solved to this hour, whether it was worse to ascend or descend,—­each ordeal in its turn seemed so much more terrible than the other.