ing
Secretary of the Treasury. He was desirous to keep me at home to
assist him, with which desire I was ready to conform, but the
opposition of his wife was so bitter that he had to decide against my
staying, and, taking my wife and boy, I returned to Rome. My brother
was already attacked by the malady of which, two years later, he died.

Arriving in Rome, and resuming the direction of the consulate, I found
to my dismay that General King had appointed as secretary of legation
a local American banker, a "Copperhead," who had in the name of the
government, but without authority, requested the Roman Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to dispense with the visa on the passports of all
American visitors, and Antonelli was, of course, too glad to be
relieved of the embarrassment which had been often caused him by the
regulation, which all the Southerners had asked to be relieved from.
Thus I found that the principal resource of the consulate was gone. As
the home government had given the strongest orders to protest against
any such exception being made of American passports, I, of course,
protested, but was informed that the rule had been taken at the
request of my own government; and, though Antonelli knew perfectly
that Hooker had no authority to enter into any negotiations with him
on any subject, and that he had no official position, it suited him
to accept the contrary, and my remonstrances to the minister, General
King, had no effect. I then laid the matter before the Department
of State at Washington, but, as General King was the close personal
friend of Seward, who was quite indifferent to diplomatic scandals
away from England, no attention was paid to my complaints, and I gave
up the consulate to Brown, the consular agent at Civita Vecchia, to
get what he could from it, and devoted myself entirely to painting,
by which, with a little writing, I made enough to live in the simple
manner which I was accustomed to.

Released from all obligations to remain at the consulate, I spent the
most of my time in sketching on the Campagna. Of all the landscape I
have ever seen, in the Alps, Sicily, Greece, the American forests and
lakes, or semi-tropical Florida, nothing has impressed me as did the
Roman Campagna in its then condition of decay and neglect. The beauty
of line of its mountain framework is still there, and passages here
and there are untouched, but the improvements of progress have
intruded in so many points that, as a w