Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

[582] the Duomo;¹ to the Royal Palace² and St. Elmo, ascending to the castle and descending by donkey; took drives to the tomb of Virgil and the Grotta del Cane; visited Herculaneum and Pompeii, dining at the Hotel Diomed, where Sumner ordered Falernian wine; attempted the ascent of Vesuvius, but were stopped short of the Hermitage by a hard rain, Sumner going alone to Paestum. With all his weakness, his energy was too much for Bemis. The latter, whose journal and oral account are here followed, relates Sumner's pertinacity in seeing all that was possible in the way of art and history; his indignation at the Royal Palace (Bomba was then king) that ‘all this should belong to one Man, and be for the great only;’ his stopping a man with a drove of goats, and buying a mug of fresh milk, while the crowd collected from curiosity as he was drinking it; his constant practice in speaking Italian, which he had not used for twenty years; and withal, his good nature and generosity as a fellow-traveller.³ they went by rail to Capua, and thence by vettura to Rome,—taking the entire interior, as the coupe was already engaged,—being from Monday to Wednesday on the way. Their first night was at Mola di Gaeta, where the landlord of the inn called Cicero's Villa offered them only a single room, but Sumner's peremptory ‘O due stanze o la strada’ brought them the two; and the second night was at Cisterna. From Albano they drove to the lakes Albano and Nemi, and by the middle of the afternoon they alighted in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, where Mrs. William W. Story awaited Sumner with a carriage, and claiming him as guest, drove him to her apartment in the Palazzo Barberini.

Mr. Bemis thus wrote in his journal of Sumner's conversation during their intercourse at this time—

What shall I say of the long and intimate association that I had with Sumner during these ten days? Certainly that it abounded with instruction and the highest interest for me. On our route to Rome in the vettura, I should think we talked together nearly three quarters of the time continuously. We discussed literary subjects,—Hannibal's campaigns, Italian writers, Manzoni's Promessi Sposi; French and Italian morals; love, including some of Sumner's experiences; society, wherein S. told me a great deal of his English and foreign acquaintanceships; law, including his relations