in our nation was due quite as much to
this power or quality in him as to any intellectual or even executive
ability that he may have possessed. He was a good, conscientious,
patriotic, strong man, and gentle and tender as a woman. He had the
old-fashioned ways, the courtesy, and the personal dignity which are
not often seen nowadays. His physical frame was immensely powerful and
athletic; but life used him hard, and he was far from considerate of
himself, and he died at sixty-five, when he might, under more favorable
conditions, have rounded out his century.

My father had written nothing, not even his journal, during the period
of Una's illness; but he began to work again now, being moved thereto
not only as a man whose nature is spontaneously impelled to express
itself on the imaginative side, but also in order to recoup himself for
some part of the loss of the ten thousand dollars which he had loaned to
John O'Sullivan, which, it was now evident, could never be repaid.
His first conception of the story of The Marble Faun had been as a
novelette; but he now decided to expand it so as to contain a large
amount of descriptive matter; and although the strict rules of artistic
construction may have been somewhat relaxed in order to admit these
passages, there is no doubt that the book gained thereby in value as a
permanent addition to literature, the plot, powerful though it is, being
of importance secondary to the creation of an atmosphere which
should soften the outlines and remove the whole theme into a suitable
remoteness from the domain of matter-of-fact. The Eternal City is, after
all, as vital a portion of the story as are the adventures of Miriam,
Hilda, Kenyon, and Donatello. They could not have existed and played
their parts in any other city of the world.

In selecting local habitations for the creatures of his imagination, he
strolled into the Via Portoghese, and there found the "Virgin's Shrine,"
which, with minor modifications, was to become the home of Hilda. I
quote from his journal the description of the actual place as he saw
it. "The tower in the Via Portoghese," he says, "has battlements
and machicolations, and the upper half of it is covered with gray,
ancient-looking stucco. On the summit, at one corner, is the shrine of
the Virgin, rising quite above the battlements, and with its lamp before
it. Beneath the machicolations is a window, probably belonging to the
upper chamber; and there seems to be