"I have found him here in Rome, the whole of my early friend, and even better than I used to know him; a heart as true and affectionate, a mind much widened and deepened by the experience of life. We hold just the same relation to one another as of yore, and we have passed all the turning-off places, and may hope to go on together, still the same dear friends, as long as we live. I do not love him one whit the less for having been President, nor for having done me the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks eloquently in his favor, and perhaps says a little for myself. If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps I might not have borne it so well; but each did his best for the other, as friend for friend." The illness of Una had thrown a shadow over these last days at Rome, and it was in any case necessary to take her away. In a characteristic outburst Hawthorne writes to Fields:-- "I bitterly detest Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it farewell forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has happened to it, from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish the very site had been obliterated before I ever saw it." They left Rome late in May and went by sea to Marseilles, and after a rapid journey up the Rhone and to Geneva went by Paris to London. The return to England was somewhat like homecoming, and during this second residence Hawthorne shows a more sympathetic and contented spirit. He determined to finish his romance here, and settled first at Whitby and afterwards at Redcar, and still later he migrated to Leamington; but the romance was mainly put into shape at Redcar, where the necessary conditions of solitude were best realized. He lived very much as when he had written his other works at home, writing in the morning and spending the rest of the day with the children out of doors on the sands. He finished the book on November 8, and it was published early the following spring. [Footnote: _The Marble Faun_, or the Romance of Monte Beni. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter." Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1860. 12mo. 2 vols., pp. 283; 288.]