The nucleus of the “Reveries of a Bachelor” was a paper contributed to _The Southern Literary Messenger_, and entitled “A Bachelor’s Reverie, in Three Parts: 1. Smoke, signifying Doubt; 2. Blaze, signifying Cheer; 3. Ashes, signifying Desolation.” Mr. Mitchell has a bibliographical rarity in his library in the shape of a copy of this first paper, in book form, bearing date Wormsloe, 1850, with the following colophon: “This edition of twelve copies of the Bachelor’s Reverie, by Ik: Marvel, hath been: by the Author’s Leave: printed privately for George Wymberley Jones.” This Mr. Jones was a wealthy and eccentric gentleman, who amused himself with a private printing-press at his estate of Wormsloe, near Savannah. The “Reveries,” by the way, has been by all odds its author’s most popular work, judged by the unfailing criterion of “sales.” In 1851 Mr. Mitchell was invited by Henry J. Raymond to edit the literary department of the _Times_, then newly established; but the labor promised to be too exacting for his state of health, and the offer was declined. In May, 1853, Mr. Mitchell was appointed Consul for the United States at Venice. In June of the same year he was married to Miss Mary F. Pringle, of Charleston, and sailed again for Europe to enter upon the duties of his consulate. He was attracted to Venice by the opportunities for historical study, and while there he began the collection of material looking toward a history of the Venetian Republic. This plan never found fulfilment, but traces of Mr. Mitchell’s Venetian studies crop out in many of his subsequent writings; especially, perhaps, in his lecture on “Titian and his Times,” read before the Art School of Yale College, and included in his latest volume, “Bound Together” (1884). In 1854 he resigned his consulate, and in July of the following year, he purchased Edgewood.