The verses accompanying this letter were the rough draft of the ode “To Andrew Jackson,” numbered CCLXXXVIII. in Landor’s miscellaneous poems. On his side Willis could not thank Landor enough for his introduction to Lady Blessington. “She is my lode star and most valued friend,” he writes, “for whose acquaintance I am so much indebted to you that you will find it difficult in your lifetime to diminish my obligations.” In England Willis fell at once upon his feet. While traveling on the Continent, his intimacies had been principally among Englishmen and Americans, and though well received in the native society of Florence by virtue of his diplomatic credentials, he had remained, after all, a stranger and a looker-on. A foreign language imperfectly learned is a barrier to complete intercourse even in the most cosmopolitan society. In France and Italy he had made acquaintances; in England he made friends and formed domestic ties which bound him to the country as long as he lived. He did not fancy the French and Italians, though he found their cities interesting to visit; but he liked the English and they treated him well. No American author except Irving and Cooper had received from them a tithe of the attentions which they accorded to Willis; and Cooper, though personally well liked, had offended British prejudices by his pugnacious writings and was more popular in Paris than in London. The next two years of Willis’s life were perhaps the acme of his social and literary career, and he always looked back to them as the brightest spot in his memory. The experience was not altogether healthy for him, though it was stimulating at the time. He was not spoiled by success, but he was naturally a little intoxicated by it, and a little dazzled by the courtly splendors of the circles to which he was now admitted. When he went back to America, he did so reluctantly, and with the hope of returning soon to make his home in England. He found the change to the plainer conditions of American life a chilling one, and he had acquired habits and standards which did not fit in easily with the requirements of a journalist’s career in a new country.