Foresti was the most charming of correspondents; in a chirography almost feminine, he wrote, in the old cavalier style, such quaintly pleasant epistles, with graceful turns of expression, beautiful epithets, and appropriate adjectives, that, to one fond of the writer and cognizant of his native tongue, the most casual note was a prize to be treasured. "Truly," remarks one of his friends, "he was _squisitamente affetuoso di cuore_," and now the sweetest proof thereof is to be found in his correspondence. In his two visits to Italy, he used to walk daily to the shores, when within reach of the Mediterranean, and salute, with tears, the _bandiera stellata_,--as he called our national banner, under which his exile had been protected and honored. The pleasure expressed at Foresti's consular appointment, as well as the high order of applicants in his behalf, afforded the best evidence of the friendship and interest he had awakened and maintained in a foreign land. On the shores of the Hudson, by the cliffs of Newport, under the elms of New Haven, as well as in the metropolis where he had so long dwelt, faithful hearts rejoiced at the announcement. "Few are aware," said Hillhouse, in his Eulogy on Lafayette, "how hallowed and how deep are their feelings who worship Liberty as a mistress they may never possess." And it was the constancy and intelligence of his devotion to her which won for him such peculiar regard; for he did not belong to the sentimental and spasmodic, but to the resolute and philosophic devotees at her shrine; his native taste was more wedded to the wise satire of Casti and the acute generalities of Vico than satisfied with the soft beauties of Petrarch or the luxurious graces of Boccaccio; the stoical Alfieri, more than the epicurean Metastasio, breathed music to his soul. "You belong," wrote Pellico to him, "you belong to those who to a generous disposition unite an intellect to see things wisely; never can I forget the gifts of genius and of courage developed in you in the days of misfortune." It was an auspicious sign of the times when the land which protected such an exile was represented by him in that of his nativity.