hole, the solemn and poetic
aspect of those days is irretrievably lost. I used to sit out in the
most lonely passages painting into the twilight until I could no
longer distinguish my colors, and then tramp back to Rome at my
fastest, to get in before the gates closed for the night. If it was
not the rapture of art, it was the passion of poetic nature.

As fortune would have it, there was in Rome that winter Mr. George
G. Fogg, the minister of the United States of America at Berne, a
personal friend of Lincoln, and chairman of the Young Men's National
Committee, which arranged the convention that nominated him. On
Lincoln's election Fogg was offered his choice of the diplomatic
appointments, and selected Berne, the most modest position he could
take. He came to pass the Christmas holidays at Rome, and of course I
laid my case before him. He in turn put it before his late colleagues
in the House, and the committee on foreign affairs made a strong
representation at the Department of State; and, when Seward refused to
recall King, or take any measures to correct the injustice done me,
they struck out from the consular and diplomatic appropriation bill
the appropriation for the legation at Rome, which meant the abolition
of the legation, and I was a little later transferred to Crete, a
salaried post, where there was supposed to be nothing to do but make
my quarterly report.

My commission must have been one of the very last Lincoln signed, for
he was assassinated before it reached me. I was spending the evening
at the quarters of one of my best Roman friends, Mr. John A. King (a
cousin of, but not a sympathizer with, the general), when the news
came of the murder of Lincoln and the attempt on Seward, and very
vivid still is the recollection of the horror and grief we all felt.
But we also felt that the President's work was done, and that his
fame was set securely in history, beyond the chance of any political
blunder to damage it. Could he ever have devised a better death
in view of his future influence and honor? I learned from one of
Lincoln's Illinois friends, whom I later saw in Rome, that the
appointment in Crete was intended by the President as the recognition
of the injustice with which Seward had treated my case. My experience
of Seward's way of looking at public appointments and public
interests, when crossed by his personal relations, certainly went to
confirm the apprehensions of Mr. Fogg and his friends that S