Mitchell took up the study of law in New York, but found himself physically unequal to a sedentary life. Moreover, France was on the eve of revolution. The young law student thought it no time to dawdle over Puffendorf, Grotius, and ‘the amiable, aristocratic Blackstone,’ when there was a chance to see history made. He ‘threw Puffendorf, big as he was, into the corner,’ and started for Paris, spent eight months there, saw what he went to see, and described it in his second book, _Battle Summer_ (1850).[61] His third literary venture was a periodical essay, _The Lorgnette, or Studies of the Town, by an Opera-Goer_. It was published weekly for six months, and sold by Henry Kernot, ‘a small bookseller up Broadway, at the centre of what was then the fashionable shopping region.’ For a time the secret of the authorship was well kept, Kernot being as much in the dark as the public. To divert suspicion from himself, Mitchell thought to bring out in a distant city, and under his own name, something ‘of an entirely different quality and tone’ from _The Lorgnette_. He failed in getting a Boston publisher, and _Reveries of a Bachelor_, the book in question, was published by Baker and Scribner in New York (1850). Its success led to the making of another series of ‘reveries.’ This was _Dream Life_, written in six weeks of the summer and published in the fall of 1851. On these two books ‘Ik Marvel’s’ reputation with the general reading public still rests. In May, 1853, Mitchell was appointed United States consul at Venice. On the thirty-first of the same month he married Miss Mary F. Pringle, of Charleston, South Carolina, and in June sailed for Italy. The account of his induction into the consular office will be found in _Seven Stories_. A lively and good-humored narrative, it is not to be read without great amusement, together with a feeling of contempt for the shabby way in which our glorious (and sometimes parsimonious) republic used to treat its humbler officials. During the two years of his consulship Mitchell collected materials for a history of the Venetian Republic. The book is still unpublished, and presumably has been long since abandoned. The days of his public service being at an end, Mitchell returned to America and settled on an estate near New Haven (‘Edgewood’), where since 1855 he has led the life of a man of letters and gentleman farmer. In addition to the books already named, he has published: _Fudge Doings_, 1855; _My Farm of Edgewood_, 1863; _Seven Stories_, 1864; _Wet Days at Edgewood_, 1865; _Doctor Johns_, 1866; _Rural Studies_, 1867;[62] _About Old Story Tellers_, 1877; _The Woodbridge Record_, 1883; _Bound Together_, 1884; _English Lands, Letters, and Kings_, 1889–90; _American Lands and Letters_, 1897.