“I received your letter from Florence, and conclude that you are now
    in Rome, and probably enjoying the Carnival,—­a tame description of
    which, by the by, I have introduced into my Romance.

“I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes in favor of the forthcoming work, and sincerely join my own prayers to yours in its behalf, but without much confidence of a good result.  My own opinion is, that I am not really a popular writer, and that what popularity I have gained is chiefly accidental, and owing to other causes than my own kind or degree of merit.  Possibly I may (or may not) deserve something better than popularity; but looking at all my productions, and especially this latter one, with a cold or critical eye, I can see that they do not make their appeal to the popular mind.  It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is for quite another class of works than those which I myself am able to write.  If I were to meet with such books as mine, by another writer, I don’t believe I should be able to get through them.

* * * * * “To return to my own moonshiny Romance; its fate will soon be settled, for Smith and Elder mean to publish on the 28th of this month.  Poor Ticknor will have a tight scratch to get his edition out contemporaneously; they having sent him the third volume only a week ago.  I think, however, there will be no danger of piracy in America.  Perhaps nobody will think it worth stealing.  Give my best regards to William Story, and look well at his Cleopatra, for you will meet her again in one of the chapters which I wrote with most pleasure.  If he does not find himself famous henceforth, the fault will be none of mine.  I, at least, have done my duty by him, whatever delinquency there may be on the part of other critics.

“Smith and Elder persist in calling the book ‘Transformation,’ which gives one the idea of Harlequin in a pantomime; but I have strictly enjoined upon Ticknor to call it ’The Marble Faun; a Romance of Monte Beni.’”

In one of his letters written at this period, referring to his design of going home, he says:—­

    “I shall not have been absent seven years till the 5th of July next,
    and I scorn to touch Yankee soil sooner than that....  As regards
    going home I alternate between a longing and a dread.”

Returning to London from the Continent, in April, I found this letter, written from Bath, awaiting my arrival:—­

“You are welcome back.  I really began to fear that you had been assassinated among the Apennines or killed in that outbreak at Rome.  I have taken passages for all of us in the steamer which sails the 16th of June.  Your berths are Nos. 19 and 20.  I engaged them with the understanding that you might go earlier or later, if you chose; but I would advise you to go on the 16th; in the first place, because the state-rooms for our party are the most eligible in the ship;