George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

Afterwards we went to Prince Massimo's, and took Anna with us, by special invitation, to see we knew not what. It turned out to be a glass-blower, who made small articles with a good deal of neatness, and amused some children and grown people very well. Such an exhibition would not have been thought very princely in Paris or London, nor very remarkable anywhere; but the good-nature of the Romans is satisfied with very small entertainment.

March 3.—. . . . . In the afternoon we went to Overbeck's atelier. . . . . He had little to show us, except the cartoon for a large picture, which is to be an allegory on art, and is full of his deep meanings. I saw nothing, however, better than his Christ entering Jerusalem, the original of which I saw here almost twenty years ago, and which is now at Lubeck. He himself is gentle, mild, and interesting, beginning to grow old. . . . . In the evening the Sismondis, with Miss Alien, made us a long and very agreeable visit, uninvited. He is growing old, and has given up his ‘Histoire des Francais’ from weariness, and seems disposed to seek, hereafter, chiefly for comfort and rest. He cares, he says, nothing about the arts, and therefore looks, even in Rome, to social intercourse for his chief pleasures; and having an excellent and sensible wife, enjoys himself with his plain common-sense not a little. Their fortune is moderate, but equal to their moderate wants; and, indeed, he has lately been able to spare enough to make happy a favorite niece in a love-match, to which her friends would not consent on account of the want of means between the parties. It was a beautiful and characteristic piece of kindness on the part of Sismondi, and made a good deal of talk when we were in Florence.

March 4.—I made a very agreeable visit to Sismondi, who is my next-door neighbor, and found with him Barbieri, the great Italian preacher, whom I knew at the Marquis Gino Capponi's, in Florence. I was glad to see them together, and I liked Barbieri more than ever for his gentleness and spirit of persuasion. He set out from the North of Italy upon an engagement to preach during Lent at Palermo, but has been prevented from getting there by the total nonintercourse between Naples and Sicily. At Rome he does not preach. The authorities of the Church do not wish to exhibit the powers of a man who, while he preaches in a pure, simple, and even classical style, and draws crowds after him, such as have hardly been seen since the Middle Ages, makes yet very little effort to raise contributions