It was with a great sense of relief from tension, after the death of the President, that Lowell took a leave of absence, and made a short trip to Italy. “I am just starting,” he writes to T. W. Higginson, 8 October, 1881, “for the continent on a leave of absence which I sorely need. Wish me joy, I am going to Italy! Whether I may not find somebody else in my chair at the Legation when I come back is one of those problems that I cannot solve, and care little about, though now that I have made friendships here I should like to stay on a little longer. Did you know that I have five grandchildren?” Unfortunately Mrs. Lowell was not sufficiently restored to health to accompany him, but he had the good fortune to find Mr. and Mrs. Field at the end of his journey. “We reached Flushing,” he wrote Mrs. Lowell from Frankfort, 10 October, “at half-past six in the morning and there took the train for this place. We travelled several thousand miles, as it seemed to me, through Holland, every now and then seeing a hunchbacked church gathering its village under its wings like a clucking hen when she sees the hawk in the air, at every turn a windmill and low fields bordered with trees that always look just beginning to grow--Heaven knows why. After crossing the Prussian frontier, the dead level continued as far as Cologne. The only difference was that the trees were larger and often one saw pretty linden-alleys leading up to the little towns. The railway officials had a more close-buttoned military air, and were always saluting invisible superiors.” On the 12th he wrote from Weimar: “I left Frankfort at noon on Monday and got here towards seven in the evening. The first half of the journey was through one of the loveliest valleys (of the broad and basking kind) I ever saw. The only name I recognized in this part of the way was Offenbach, where Goethe had his adventures with Lilli a hundred and more years ago, but after passing Elm the names grew more familiar and famous. _Fulda_, Gotha, Erfurt, _Eisenach_. Weimar is a neat little capital which looks about as large as Salem, and where the one stranger is as much stared at as there. _Why_ it is a capital, and especially why it should be where it is, puzzles me. The park is really delightful, with fine trees and one of the most beautiful streams running through it I ever saw. The water is so clear as to seem almost luminous, the water-mosses are as green as those of the sea, and some horse-chestnuts that had fallen in shone like live coals. I walked about the town all the forenoon.”