“I loved Mary B., and never think of her without emotion; but with all the world in France, Italy, and England treating me like a son or a brother, I am not coming home to fight my way to her through bitter relatives and slander and opposition. They nearly crushed me once, and I shall take care how they get another opportunity. Still, after three years’ separation, I think I never loved any one so well, and if my way were not so hedged up, it would draw me home now.” To Mary Benjamin was addressed the lovely little poem, “To M----, from Abroad,” with its motto from Metastasio,-- “L’alma, quel che non ha, sogna et figura.” By 1829 Willis had accumulated verses enough to fill another slender volume of “Fugitive Poetry.” Of the forty-three pieces in this, the “Dedication Hymn,” written to be sung at the consecration of the Hanover Street Church in Boston, has the best title to remembrance. It possesses a brief energy seldom attained by Willis. As late as 1856, his old English friend, Dr. William Beattie, wrote to him: “Your beautiful ‘Hymn’ was sung in one of our cathedral towns, at the consecration of a new church, by an overflowing congregation. Surely this is a fact worth noting. Miss Rogers was the first who told me of it, and often have I repeated ‘The perfect world by Adam trod,’ etc.” “The Annoyer” and “Saturday Afternoon” have been already mentioned. “Contemplation”-- “They are all up, the innumerable stars”-- had the feeling, though not the artistic touch, of Tennyson’s “St. Agnes,” and came near to being a fine poem. There were five sonnets, one of them--an acrostic to Emily Marshall--with a good closing couplet,-- “Life in thy presence were a thing to keep, Like a gay dreamer clinging to his sleep.” “A Portrait,” also, which Willis did not republish, contained an effective passage, beginning “I go away like one who’s heard, In some fine scene, the prompter’s word,” etc. There were two more scriptural pieces, and the remainder of the book was of no importance. Many of its contents were written before those of the earlier volume of “Sketches.” The “American Monthly” proved a failure financially, owing, doubtless, to a lack of the right business management, for which Willis had no faculty, and with which, in truth, he had nothing to do. At the close of the summer of 1831 the magazine suspended publication, and its editor, shaking off the dust of his feet against the New England metropolis, fled to more genial climes. He left behind him the squibs of his brother journalists, the cackle of the tea-tables, and some $3,000 of debts incurred through the failure of his enterprise. He never quite forgave Boston. In a letter to his mother from England, September 12, 1835, he wrote:--