But of all the countries in which he resided he grew to be fondest of Italy. This was partly due to the fact that there he could indulge to the full extent two passions that had come to be a part of his nature--the love of fine skies, and of beautiful scenery. His feelings in regard to this country and to France he expressed on one occasion with a courtliness that was wholly free from the insincerity of the courtier's art. In November, 1830, shortly after his return to Paris from Germany, he was presented to the royal family. The Queen of Louis Philippe, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I., of the Two (p. 070) Sicilies, asked him of all the lands visited by him which he most preferred. "That in which your majesty was born," was the reply, "for its nature, and that in which your majesty reigns for its society." There was not in this the slightest compliment, if by compliment anything is meant inconsistent with the severest truth. "Switzerland," he said afterward, "is the country to astonish and sometimes to delight; but Italy is the land to love." During the nearly two years he remained there, its scenery, its climate, its recollections, and also its people, were constantly gaining a hold upon his heart. No country did he ever leave with so much regret; and when he came to take his final departure, his feelings were such as are experienced by him who is on the point of bidding farewell to a much-loved home. When he passed into the valley of the Adige on his journey to the Tyrol, in 1830, he reversed the usual practice of the traveler who has his eyes fixed only on what is to come. He turned around to cast a last lingering glance at the land he was about to leave behind. Italy was the only country, his wife told him, that she had ever known him to quit looking over the shoulder. His regard for the people was, perhaps, intensified by the reaction against the estimation in which he had been wont to hold them. "The vulgar-minded English,"--he said in one of those deliciously irritating and double-acting sentences he was afterward in the habit of frequently uttering--"talk of the damned Italians, and the vulgar-minded American, quite in rule, imitates his great model." Certainly his prejudices against the inhabitants of that country were soon swept away. He contrasted them favorably with all their neighbors. They were (p. 071) more gracious than the English, more sincere than the French, and infinitely more refined than the Germans. In grace of mind, and in love, and even knowledge of the arts, a large portion of the common Italians were, in his opinion, as much superior to the Anglo-Saxons as civilization is to barbarism. He came in time to have a sort of fondness even for the professional mendicants. He furnishes us a curious picture of the beggars who assembled about his residence daily in Sorrento, to whom he invariably gave a grano apiece. The company, starting out from