To William W. Greenough, Boston.
Turin, May 22, 1857.
my dear Greenough,—I am indebted to you for two most agreeable letters, and I do not suppose I shall ever pay you. But honesty requires me to confess what I owe, and give you such a poor dividend as I can out of my insolvency.
Let me add to this unhappy confession, that I hope you will let me hear from you again, and that you will tell me more about the Library; concerning which I know a good deal less than I want to, nobody having intimated to me what sort of a building our structure in Boylston Street turns out to be, ugly or good looking, suited to its purpose or inconvenient; or whether the books that have arrived are well bound, and, from their contents and character, of the classes that it is desirable should early be put on our shelves, so as to satisfy the public wants and make a satisfactory impression and appearance . . . .
I need not tell you that we passed a pleasant winter in Rome.
It was the pleasantest of the eight I have spent in Europe.
I took things very easy, went where I liked, and stayed at home when I had a mind to, and never overworked myself with sight-seeing.
The climate, indeed, I found debilitating,—as do nearly all strangers,— and I felt a good deal fatigued when I left the city; but I enjoyed, perhaps in consequence of this, eight days of delicious rest at Sorrento soon afterwards, more than I ever enjoyed any days of mere repose in my life.
But then I was never in such a delicious place before, with such luxurious quarters, to add to its peculiar agrements. Our drives about all that part of the kingdom, too, not merely those in the immediate neighborhood of Naples, but those to Salerno and Amalfi, and once a little boating, left nothing to desire, taken as they were in the rich and beautiful spring, season; the orange groves, where we lounged away sundry forenoons, in full fruit, and the hills, that we climbed on donkeys, covered with vines bursting forth in all their early luxuriance.
Since that time-we arrived in Naples March 20, and left it April 18—we have spent a few days in Rome,—from which we turned our faces with great regret,—and a fortnight in Florence, where I did a good deal of work for the Library, and then came on to Genoa by Pisa, Spezia, and the picturesque Corniche road; and from Genoa by the magnificent government railroad, passing through a tunnel almost exactly two miles long, lined and arched with brick from one end to the other.
We arrived here day before yesterday, 