d knew every custode in every
gallery, and could have every secret treasure unlocked. He was perfectly
at home about town--would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, and
was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it rained.

We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we saw there,
my memory is confused literally with an _embarras de richesses_. The
Ecumenical Council was being held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman,
who possibly did not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was
declared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things.

While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the sculptor, and his
wife and daughter, Edith, for whom Thackeray wrote his most beautiful
tale, and I at my humble distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome,"
which contained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war. At
their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and many more whose
names are known to all. It was there also that a lady of the Royal
English household amused us very much one evening by narrating how the
"Breitmann Ballads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English,
were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation among the then
youthful members of the Royal family, and what haste and alarm there was
to put the forbidden book out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was
announced as coming. I also met in Rome the American poet and painter T.
Buchanan Read, who gave me a dinner, and very often that remarkable
character General Carroll Tevis, who, having fought under most flags, and
been a Turkish bey or pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope. In the
following year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery in
Bourbaki's retreat, and was decorated on the field of battle. Then
again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the head of the military
college. He had fairly won his rank of general in the American Civil
War, but as there was some disinclination or other to give it to him, I
had used my influence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it
for him. He was a perfect type of the old _condottiero_, but with Dugald
Dalgetty's scrupulous faith to his military engagements. The American
clergyman in Rome was the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain
Nevin. There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend (now
residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we have continually been
since, indebted for th