ke other ex-presidents,
was travelling in Europe, came to Rome at the time, and that the
Note-Books contain some singularly beautiful and touching allusions to
his old friend's gratitude for his sympathy, and enjoyment of his
society. The sentiment of friendship has on the whole been so much
less commemorated in literature than might have been expected from
the place it is supposed to hold in life, that there is always
something striking in any frank and ardent expression of it. It
occupied, in so far as Pierce was the object of it, a large place in
Hawthorne's mind, and it is impossible not to feel the manly
tenderness of such lines as these:--

"I have found him here in Rome, the whole of my early
friend, and even better than I used to know him; a heart as
true and affectionate, a mind much widened and deepened by
the experience of life. We hold just the same relation to
one another as of yore, and we have passed all the
turning-off places, and may hope to go on together, still
the same dear friends, as long as we live. I do not love him
one whit the less for having been President, nor for having
done me the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks
eloquently in his favour, and perhaps says a little for
myself. If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps I might
not have borne it so well; but each did his best for the
other, as friend for friend."

The Note-Books are chiefly taken up with descriptions of the regular
sights and "objects of interest," which we often feel to be rather
perfunctory and a little in the style of the traditional tourist's
diary. They abound in charming touches, and every reader of
_Transformation_ will remember the delightful colouring of the
numerous pages in that novel, which are devoted to the pictorial
aspects of Rome. But we are unable to rid ourselves of the impression
that Hawthorne was a good deal bored by the importunity of Italian
art, for which his taste, naturally not keen, had never been
cultivated. Occasionally, indeed, he breaks out into explicit sighs
and groans, and frankly declares that he washes his hands of it.
Already, in England, he had made the discovery that he could, easily
feel overdosed with such things. "Yesterday," he wrote in 1856, "I
went out at about twelve and visited the British Museum; an
exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much
at once, and I wandered fro