_Rome, May_ 7, 1847.--I write not to you about these countries, of the famous people I see, of magnificent shows and places. All these things are only to me an illuminated margin on the text of my inward life. Earlier, they would have been more. Art is not important to me now. I like only what little I find that is transcendently good, and even with that feel very familiar and calm. I take interest in the state of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them. I see the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in Europe; the tide of things does not wash through them as violently as with us, and they have time to run in the tread-mill of system. Still, they serve this great future which I shall not live to see. I must be born again.
_Florence, June_ 20, 1847.--I have just come hither from Rome. Every minute, day and night, there is something to be seen or done at Rome, which we cannot bear to lose. We lived on the Corso, and all night long, after the weather became fine, there was conversation or music before my window. I never seemed really to sleep while there, and now, at Florence, where there is less to excite, and I live in a more quiet quarter, I feel as if I needed to sleep all the time, and cannot rest as I ought, there is so much to do.
I now speak French fluently, though not correctly, yet well enough to make my thoughts avail in the cultivated society here, where it is much spoken. But to know the common people, and to feel truly in Italy, I ought to speak and understand the spoken Italian well, and I am now cultivating this sedulously. If I remain, I shall have, for many reasons, advantages for observation and enjoyment, such as are seldom permitted to a foreigner.
I forgot to mention one little thing rather interesting. At the _Miserere_ of the Sistine chapel, I sat beside Goethe's favorite daughter-in-law, Ottilia, to whom I was introduced by Mrs. Jameson.
_Florence, July_ 1, 1847.--I do not wish to go through Germany in a hurried way, and am equally unsatisfied to fly through Italy; and shall, therefore, leaving my companions in Switzerland, take a servant to accompany me, and return hither, and hence to Rome for the autumn, perhaps the winter. I should always suffer the pain of Tantalus thinking of Rome, if I could not see it more thoroughly than I have as yet even begun to; for it was all _outside_ the two months, just finding out where objects were. I had only just begun to know them, when I was obliged to leave. The prospect of returning presents many charms, but it leaves me alone in the midst of a strange land.