any imposture.  And I believe I may add that Mr. Powers fully believed in the genuineness of the phenomena witnessed.  It is also perhaps fair to state that had the answer to my question been “On board the steamboat going from London to Ostend,” the reply would have been correct.  How far it is possible to suppose that the word “Ostend” may have been the first word of an answer about to be completed in that sense if it had not been interrupted, I leave to the judgment of the reader.

For some time after this Powers used to recount to me the marvels which were witnessed at his house.  He was not pleased with the medium as an inmate in other respects:  he did not form a favorable opinion of his moral character.  I am speaking of matters now many years old, and I might not have considered it necessary to record these impressions of a very specially upright and honest man with regard to one who is still before the public were it not that they go to increase the value of Mr. Powers’s testimony to the genuineness of the phenomena which he witnessed, by showing that his judgment upon the subject was at least in no degree warped by any prejudice in favor of the miracle-worker.

Meantime, the sculptor, still in the modest tenement which he occupied for so many years in the Via Romana, was growing in fame and reputation from day to day.  A visit to the Studio Powers—­or Pousse, as the ciceroni and valets-de-place called it—­was an obligatory part of the tourist’s regular work in “doing” Florence.  A large family was, during those prosperous and laborious years, growing up around him—­sons and daughters, most of whom he lived to see settled in life and to be justly proud of.  Death did not altogether pass his threshold by, but he knocked there but once or twice in all that length of years.  At last the time came when the successful artist felt that his position enabled and justified him in moving from his old quarters to more commodious and luxurious ones.  He had been but a tenant in the Via Romana:  he was now to inhabit a house of his own.

It was the time when Florence was for a few short years enjoying the fallacious and fatal honor of being the capital of Italy.  There were some who from the first were fully convinced that that honor would be a transitory one.  The greater number thought that the will of France and of her emperor, and the difficulties attending the simultaneous residence of the king of Italy and the pope within the walls of the same city, would avail to make Florence the capital of the new kingdom for at least as many years as human prudence could look forward to.  The earthquake-like events which shook down the bases of all such calculations, and enabled Italy to realize her longing desire to see Rome the capital of the nation, are too well known to need even referring to.  Florence suddenly ceased to be the metropolis of Italy, and the amount of financial ruin in the case of those who had invested money in building to