It was during one of his rambles with Alexander Ireland through the Manchester Exhibition rooms that Hawthorne saw Tennyson wandering about.  I have always thought it unfortunate that these two men of genius could not have been introduced on that occasion.  Hawthorne was too shy to seek an introduction, and Tennyson was not aware that the American author was present.  Hawthorne records in his journal that he gazed at Tennyson with all his eyes, “and rejoiced more in him than in all the other wonders of the Exhibition.”  When I afterwards told Tennyson that the author whose “Twice-Told Tales” he happened to be then reading at Farringford had met him at Manchester, but did not make himself known, the Laureate said in his frank and hearty manner:  “Why didn’t he come up and let me shake hands with him?  I am sure I should have been glad to meet a man like Hawthorne anywhere.”

At the close of 1857 Hawthorne writes to me that he hears nothing of the appointment of his successor in the consulate, since he had sent in his resignation.  “Somebody may turn up any day,” he says, “with a new commission in his pocket.”  He was meanwhile getting ready for Italy, and he writes, “I expect shortly to be released from durance.”

In his last letter before leaving England for the Continent he says:—­

“I made up a huge package the other day, consisting of seven closely written volumes of journal, kept by me since my arrival in England, and filled with sketches of places and men and manners, many of which would doubtless be very delightful to the public.  I think I shall seal them up, with directions in my will to have them opened and published a century hence; and your firm shall have the refusal of them then.

    “Remember me to everybody, for I love all my friends at least as
    well as ever.”

Released from the cares of office, and having nothing to distract his attention, his life on the Continent opened full of delightful excitement.  His pecuniary situation was such as to enable him to live very comfortably in a country where, at that time, prices were moderate.

In a letter dated from a villa near Florence on the 3d of September, 1858, he thus describes in a charming manner his way of life in Italy:—­

“I am afraid I have stayed away too long, and am forgotten by everybody.  You have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, I suppose, in that chamber over the shop, where you once took me to smoke a cigar, and have crossed my name out of your list of authors, without so much as asking whether I am dead or alive.  But I like it well enough, nevertheless.  It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really away from America,—­a satisfaction that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward