Take down your map, and show him and A- — J. and C- where I am, and let Pa tell them some stories about Rome, and tell them not to forget their uncle.

"I am very anxious to hear of mother and her affairs. I hear you have had hard times in America, this season,-an early frost, small crops, and every thing dear. But I trust that the bounties of a kind Providence have not been wanting to make you all very comfortable. You must tell me about the church affairs at Bedford, and about your own church affairs. Your success in the ministry has been very pleasing, and, I doubt not, you feel more and more, as I do, that there is no higher or nobler employment. I should have rejoiced, if I had had health, to spend my life in this service. But Provi dence has been leading me, and is still leading me, in a way that I marked not out for myself. What is yet before me, or what his designs concerning me may be, I know not, --but certainly, whatever is ordered by him will be wise and good:

66

'God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain.'

My health, though not confirmed, and not wholly relieved from disease, is, I think, improved, and I trust will still be improving. I hope to be able to return in the spring or summer, in a condition to be useful in some degree, and in some humble sphere. But the future we will leave to him whose province it is to direct and control it.

"I am sorry that I let my letter run into such a mere scribble. I intended to have given you some account of interesting scenes here, but I find I have left myself no room. Well,

then, let them go, until I can tell you about them, viva voce,

"P. S. The fields all around us are green, and the birds sing merrily every morning, but snow is distinctly seen on the distant hills, and the air is chilly and damp. It rains almost every day, and colds are very prevalent. I have had such a cold as almost to unfit me for going out for several days. I suppose the snow-banks lie all around your house, but with a good snug New England fire, you are, perhaps, as comfortable

"We have been in Rome now a little more than four weeks, and notwithstanding the depression and disability produced by my cold, I have had opportunity to see a considerable part of the seven-hilled city. Yet I could give you no account of it, beyond a meagre catalogue of the different objects of interest, which have attracted my attention. If I were in your warm study, or up in that little chamber you have built for me, and towards which I often cast a longing look, I might take out the map, and spread before you the lines of the eternal city, and walk with you from hill to hill, and from ruin to ruin, and talk in unrestrained terms of all that is interesting in classic or religious associations. I think I would first take you to the top of the tower of the present Senate-house on Capitoline hill,

and near the site of the ancient citadel, and bid you look down on 'yon fields below, where a thousand years of silenced factions sleep.' We would then extend our view to the Quirinal, Palatine and the Aventine hills, and to the Tarpeian rock; and then, enlarging our circle, we would trace the Viminal, the Esquiline and the Cœlion hills,-the limits of ancient Rome; and then, still expanding our view, we would follow up and down the winding course of the yellow Tiber, we would point out Mons Sacer, and gaze away into the distance, upon Mons Soracte, the Alban mount, and the frosty Apennines. We might then return, and, descending from the Capitol, lounge along the Forum, at its base,-the Forum, where still the eloquent air burns, breathes with Cicero.' Here I would show you the coarse, brick walls, which mark the site of the ancient Senate-house, and the three beautiful standing columns of the Comitium, and the six columns with almost the entire façade of the temple of Jupiter Tonans; and then we would stroll away, over heaps of ruins, to half-fallen walls of the matchless, the sublime, the awful Coliseum; and, returning, we would march together in triumph, as I have often triumphantly rode, under the arch of Titus, the arch of Septimius, and the arch of Constantine. These objects have all now become very familiar to me, and if your curiosity inquires where else I have been, and what else I have seen, I might, perhaps, gratify it by telling you I have strolled among the ruined palaces of Palatine, which once embraced the entire city of Romulus, and afterwards was too narrow for a single Cæsar. I have been down into the baths of Titus and Caracalla and Livia, and up into the mausoleum of Augustus,-have seen the tomb of Scipio, and wandered around the sepulchral monument of

Cecilia Metella, and the pyramid of Caius Cestus,—have seen the site of the house of Maecenas, and of Horace and Virgil,— have strolled through the gardens of Sallust,-have stood in the temples of Vesta and Minerva, and beneath the broad dome of the beautiful Pantheon. I have been up into the ball of St. Peter's, and gazed around upon the broad plains of the Romana Campagna, and upon the Mare Mediteraneum,— have been down into the cell where Jugurtha was starved to death, and Peter was imprisoned,-have stood upon the spot where Paul is said to be buried, and visited the sequestered valley in which he was beheaded,-have seen the very stone (don't you doubt it!) upon which his head was stricken off, and drank water from one of the three fountains which miraculously gushed forth at each bound of the decapitated head!— more marvellous still, I have seen the pillar on which the cock crew when Peter denied his master! the very table, yes, certainly, the very table on which the Lord's Supper was instituted, and the flight of steps over which our Saviour was dragged into the presence of Pilate, and upon which scores of votaries are seen climbing upon their knees every day. I have seen, too, multitudes of the priests of Babylon,' the cardinals and the pope; have seen the latter kiss his finger, and the former his great toe! I would like also to tell you of the glorious treasures of art and genius I have seen,-the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the sculpture of the ancients, the Gladiator, whose manly brow consents to death, yet conquers agony,'-the Laocoon, a father's love, a mortal's agony,' and the Apollo, god of light and love and poesy,'-but I can only touch your imagination, and refer you to your own recollections."

CHAPTER VIII.

SICKNESS AND DEATH.

MR. STEARNS took a severe cold while at Florence, in the early part of the winter. This was, doubtless, aggravated by over-exertion and exposure in the exciting employment of "sight-seeing," and by those strong emotions which the scenes. and objects he daily witnessed must have produced. But the weather, while he was at Florence, was exceedingly trying to his frail constitution. The atmosphere was cold, damp and chilling, such as penetrates and dispirits and disorders an invalid. On the first of January he writes: "Even now, though roses and other flowers are blooming in the gardens, the mountains and hills all round are white with snow and the air feels exceedingly chill. It is not like a New England winter, but it is almost as uncomfortable, with frequent rain, hail, sleet and even snow, though it melts almost as soon as it falls." The thermometer, on the third of January, at Florence, was four degrees below zero, and ranged during that week, every morning, from one to four below.

Jan. 4, Mr. Stearns writes in his Note Book: "The weather lowery, the air chill and frosty and penetrating, giving rise to a conversation upon the climate of Italy, in which I remarked, that I would not advise a friend with delicate lungs to pass a winter in Italy for the sake of a bland atmosphere."

Feb. 16, he writes from Rome, in a letter to his friends in America: "The air of Italy is not always that bland, conge