ces I should
perhaps take the Demosthenes and the Torso. The pictures have also
secured valuable additions. The Palace of the Caesars since the
French _scavi_, not by any means finished yet, offers a new world
to view, and we expect to see another, probably next week, in the
catacombs. Among modern works seen as yet I am most pleased with
Tenerani's Psyche fainting. A German, Loewenthal, has done a very
good picture of Gibson, and there has come up a singularly
interesting portrait believed to be of Harvey. But it is idle to
attempt to write of all the beauties and the marvels. The church
here is satisfactory; the new clergyman, Mr. Crowther, introduced
himself on Sunday with an admirable sermon. We expect the
Clarendons to-night. We do Dante every morning, and are in the
sixteenth canto.

_Dec 4._--At last we have got the Argylls, and I need not say what
an addition they are, even amidst the surpassing and absorbing
interests that surround us. I hope for your approbation in that I
have recommended to his notice a beautiful set of old Sevres
dinner plates, soft paste, which with great spirit he has
purchased for little more, I believe, than half what the
proprietor refused for them a while ago. I shall be much
disappointed if you do not think them a valuable acquisition. I
own that I should never have passed them on to a second purchaser
had I not, when I first saw them, already got much too near the
end of my own little tether. But Sevres plates and all other
'objects' are of small interest in comparison with the great
events that hang as great thick clouds in the heaven around us,
yet tipped with broad gleams of light. To-day we are at length
assured unconditionally of the departure of the French; in which I
believed already on some grounds, including this, that General
Count Montebello had ordered sixteen boxes to be packed with the
spoils of Rome, or his share of them. This departure of the might
of France represented in the garrison, takes a weight off Roman
wills and energies, which has for seventeen years bowed them to
the ground. With what kind of bound will they spring up again, and
what ugly knocks may be given in the process?

The trip was not in every respect successful. On Christmas day, he writes
to Brand: "We have had some discomforts. Our apartments twice on fire