436 MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 



Before making up my letter I cannot forbear to notice your flare up at the account 1 gave of 

 Wordsworth's remark about Mr. Prescott, and the inference I drew from it. But 1 doubt if you 

 were exactly in earnest as to the com])arative reputations of these two great men. Nothing 

 more is wanted, indeed, than your own statement of the way in which Wordsworth has advanced 

 to his present eminence, to prove that he possesses the merit of originality at least. To say that 

 a man is fifty years in making his way to the public favor, is to say that he is fifty years in 

 advance of the public mind. As to your assertion that he is now famous only with a clique, 

 show me the journal or critic now that speaks of him without reverence. For Mr. Prescott, I 

 shall not deny him the merit of a fine taste, and an artistic power of style and arrangement, for 

 which his works are admired by a great number of cultivated readers. But is an artist of this 

 kind to take rank of an originator of a new kind of poetry, which he invents and builds uj), and 

 obliges the public to receive as an addition to its literature ? But you were in joke when you 

 made the claim, and if you were not, I cannot write you down across the Atlantic, but must leave 

 it for a bone to pick on my return. I wish that your letter had been more cxjjlicit upon the 

 microscope ; you do not positively request me to buy one. I have determined to do so, however, 

 and you may expect to receive it by the Versailles from Havre on the first of January, and if you 

 do not like it, why, I will take it and "play the part of Orion myself" when I settle down upon 



Connecticut River. . . . 



Very truly yours, 



D. Tread WELL. 



To Dr. John- Ware. 



Naples, January 23, 1848. 

 Dear Doctor, — I received yours of the 14th of December at Florence, and hope there are 

 others on the way for me ; for as I am now beyond the reach of American newspapers, I depend 

 upon the Cambridge letters entirely for all that relates to the world to which I belong. I can 

 ask you to write with the more freedom, as with you " writing comes Ijy nature." I, on the 

 contrary, am descended from the hermit of Prague, and hate pen and ink. 



Our residence in Florence was very satisfactory. Of course we could have little or no inter- 

 course with the Florentine people, and were, like most other foreigners, confined to the outside 

 of tilings, and to the world of art, which gives to Italy its eminence, and perhaps forms one of the 

 causes of its degradation ; for how can a people who think a picture a greater affair than a steam- 

 engine, or an opera of more importance than a treatise on the freedom of the will, ever advance 

 the true power of the race ? 



We have found the usual discomforts of an Italian winter. Great open rooms and miserable 

 fireplaces contrast strongly with our tight parlors and scientific grates and stoves. We have 

 hardly found a door in Italy furnished with a good lock and hinges. Michael Angelo said the 

 bronze gates of the Baptistery of Florence were worthy to be the gates of Paradise ; but if trans- 

 ported there, St. Peter will find a deal of fault with their locks and hinges. 



We came to Naples by the steamer, touching at Civita Vecchia, where the only lion in vogue 

 with travellers is Gasparoni, the great robber, who was taken with his company twenty-four years 

 ago, and has been kept in prison ever since. He was accused of a hundred murders, but he 

 declined the honor of the full number, confessing only thirty-four. We saw him in the open 

 prison, and found him very merry, and, except what seemed like a little of the laughing hyena 

 in the eye, he appeared like other men. He permitted me to examine his head, in which I 

 discovered no remarkable developments except in veneration, which rises almost to a deformity. 



