This has been a most beautiful day, and I have taken a long walk out of town.  How much I should like sometimes to walk with you again!  I went to the church of St. Lorenzo, one of the most ancient in Rome, rich in early mosaics, also with spoils from the temples, marbles, ancient sarcophagi with fine bassirilievi, and magnificent columns.  There is a little of everything, but the medley is harmonized by the action of time, and the sensation induced is that of repose.  It has the public cemetery, and there lie the bones of many poor; the rich and noble lie in lead coffins in the church vaults of Rome, but St. Lorenzo loved the poor.  When his tormentors insisted on knowing where he had hid his riches,—­“There,” he said, pointing to the crowd of wretches who hovered near his bed, compelled to see the tyrants of the earth hew down the tree that had nourished and sheltered them.

Amid the crowd of inexpressive epitaphs, one touched me, erected by a son to his father.  “He was,” says the son, “an angel of prosperity, seeking our good in distant countries with unremitting toll and pain.  We owe him all.  For his death it is my only consolation that in life I never left his side.”

Returning, I passed the Pretorian Camp, the Campus Salisetus, where vestals that had broken their vows were buried alive in the city whose founder was born from a similar event.  Such are the usual, the frightful inconsistencies of mankind.

From my windows I see the Barberini palace; in its chambers are the pictures of the Cenci, and the Galatea, so beautifully described by Goethe; in the gardens are the remains of the tomb of Servius Tullius.

Yesterday as I went forth I saw the house where Keats lived in Rome, and where he died; I saw the Casino of Raphael.  Returning, I passed the villa where Goethe lived when in Rome:  afterwards, the houses of Claude and Poussin.

Ah what human companionship here! how everything speaks!  I live myself in the apartment described in Andersen’s “Improvvisatore,” which get you, and read a scene of the childhood of Antonio.  I have the room, I suppose, indicated as being occupied by the Danish sculptor.

* * * * *

TO THE SAME.

Rome, March 17, 1849.

I take occasion to enclose this seal, as a little birthday present, for I think you will be twenty-five in May.  I have used it a great deal; the design is graceful and expressive,—­the stone of some little value.

I live with the severest economy consistent with my health.  I could not live for less anywhere.  I have renounced much, have suffered more.  I trust I shall not find it impossible to accomplish, at least one of my designs.  This is, to see the end of the political struggle in Italy, and write its history.  I think it will come to its crisis within, this year.  But to complete my work as I have begun, I must watch it to the end.

This work, if I can accomplish it, will be a worthy chapter in the history of the world; and if written with the spirit which breathes through me, and with sufficient energy and calmness to execute well the details, would be what the motto on my ring indicates,—­“a possession for ever, for man.”