I became acquainted in Florence with Hiram Powers, which reminds me that
I once in Rome dined _vis-a-vis_ to Gibson and several other artists,
with whom I became intimate as young men readily do. I contrived to
study architecture, and made myself very much at home in a few studios.
The magnificent _Fiorara_, or flower-girl, whom so many will remember for
many years, was then in the full bloom of her beauty. She and others
gave flowers to any strangers whom they met, not expecting money down,
but when a man departed the flower-girls were always on hand to solicit a
gratuity. Twenty years later this same Fiorara, still a very handsome
woman, remembered me, and gave my wife a handsome bouquet on leaving.

I studied Provencal and Italian poetry in illuminated MSS. in the
Ambrosian or Laurentian Library, and took my coffee at Doney's, and saw
more of Florence in a few weeks' time than I have ever done since in any
one of my residences here, though some of them have been for six and nine
months. As is quite natural. Who that lives in London ever goes to see
the Tower? All things in Europe were so new and fresh and beautiful and
wonderful to me then, and I had been yearning for them so earnestly for
so many years, and this golden freedom followed so closely on the deadly
_ennui_ of Princeton, that I could never see enough.

If any of my readers want to know something of sorcery, I can tell them
that among its humblest professors it is perfectly understood that
pleasure or enjoyment is one of its deepest mysteries or principles, as
an integral part of fascination. So I can feel an _enchantment_,
sometimes almost incredible, in gazing on a Gothic ruin in sunshine, or a
beautiful face, a picture by Carpaccio, Norse interlaces, lovable old
books, my amethyst amulet, or a garden. For if you could sway life and
death, and own millions, or walk invisible, you could do no more than
_enjoy_; therefore you had better learn to enjoy much without such power.
Thus endeth the first lesson!

I arrived in Venice. There had been a time in America when, if I could
have truthfully declared that I had ever been in a gondola, I should have
felt as if I held a diploma of nobility in the Grand Order of
Cosmopolites. Having been conveyed in one to my hotel on the Grand
Canal, I felt that I at last held it! Now I had really mastered the
three great cities of Italy, which was the first and greatest part of all
travel in all the world of cu