This money must have been the first he had saved, and he could now spare it from his income. In the four years that he held the consulate he had held to his main purpose of laying by a competency, and when he resigned, on August 31, 1857, his mind was at ease with regard to the future for himself and his family. His gratitude for this late won independence, humble as it was, must have been deeply felt, as is apparent from his letters at the time; a great weight had been lifted from his spirit, and his happiness was such as only a man with his ideas of personal independence could realize. He proposed now to linger in Europe for some time longer; and when he was relieved from his duties in the fall he went with the family through France to Italy, hoping that the southern winter would be of benefit to Mrs. Hawthorne's still uncertain health. Life in Italy proved far more agreeable than it had been in England, and there were periods in it when Hawthorne enjoyed as great happiness in the placid course of the days as he ever experienced. For the first time in his life he was free from the necessity of labor, and he had recently escaped from that practical business of affairs and daily duties which was always irksome to him. The change, too, from the dark skies of England and its grimy Liverpool materialism to an atmosphere of sun and warmth and artistic beauty was itself enough to reanimate his spirit; and he found at once some congenial society, and not a few who seemed to him like old friends. He appears for the first time in his life really to live with other people, not as an occasional visitant coming out of his hermitage, but as one of themselves. He sought out Story, who was an old neighbor at Salem, though he had known him only slightly, and under his guidance he mixed with the American artists then in Rome,--Miss Hosmer, Thompson, Kopes, and Miss Lander,--as well as with others of the foreigners resident there, Miss Bremer, Mrs. Jameson, and Bryant among the rest; and he became good friends with Motley and his family, whose companionship he enjoyed in a very natural, frank way. The picturesque ruins of Home, its gardens and fountains and the sky and air appealed to him, as if to new senses or at least to senses newly awakened and developed; and he was sensibly attracted by the artistic works on every hand. He was not wholly uncultivated in art, though his aesthetic sense had been rather a hope than a reality all through his life. He had written to his wife before marriage, nearly twenty years ago, "I never owned a picture in my life; yet pictures have been among the earthly possessions (and they are spiritual ones too) which I most coveted;" and in his tales there is a recurring reference to pictures as a part of his imaginative world. The influence of his wife's artistic tastes in his home life had also been a kind of preparation for appreciation of the masterpieces, many of which had long been familiar to his eyes and