but the artistic temperament declared
itself in a touch of color in his cravat. His voice was melodious and
finely modulated; his bearing gravely cheerful and very courteous. No
type of man finer than Motley's has existed in modern times; all the
elements of the best and purest society were illustrated in him. He had
the depth of the scholar, the breadth and self-poise of the man of the
world, the genial warmth of the human fellow-creature, and, over all,
the harmonizing, individualizing charm of the artist. When New England
gathers her resources to make a man she achieves a result hardly to be
surpassed.

The Storys were also in Rome during these last months of our stay, and
Miss Mitchell, I think, still lingered in her little lodgings in the Via
Bocca di Leone. Miss Cushman likewise reappeared for a time, with all
her former greatness and fascination, and many other friends, new and
old, made that spring season memorable. As the moment for our departure
drew near, the magical allurement of Rome laid upon us a grasp more
than ever potent; it was impossible to realize that we were leaving it
forever. On the last evening we walked in the moonlight to the fountain
of Trevi, near our lodgings, and drank of the water--a ceremony which,
according to tradition, insures the return of the drinker. It was the
25th of May, forty-four years ago. None of us has gone back since then,
and, of the five who drank, three have passed to the country whence
no traveller returns. For my own part, as a patriotic American nearly
thirteen years old, I had no wish ever again to see Rome, and declared
myself glad to turn my back upon it, not that I had any fault to find
with it--I had always had a good time there--but my imagination was full
of my native land, with which nothing else could be comparable. I did
not learn of the fabled spell of Trevi until afterwards; then I scoffed
at and defied it, and possibly Rome may have decided that it could do
without me.

The railway to Civita Vecchia had just been completed, and we passed
swiftly over the route which had been so full of dangers and discomforts
eighteen months before. Embarking on the steamer for Marseilles, we kept
on thence to Avignon, where we spent about a week. This venerable
town had few attractions for me; I did not much care for the
fourteenth-century popes, nor for the eighteenth-century silks, nor even
for Petrarch and Laura; and the architecture of the palace, after I had
tri