"I am afraid I have stayed away too long," he wrote from Bellosguardo, to Mr. Fields, in September, 1858, "and am forgotten by everybody. You have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, I suppose, in that chamber over the shop, where you once took me to smoke a cigar, and have crossed my name out of your list of authors, without so much as asking whether I am dead or alive. But I like it well enough, nevertheless. It is pleasant to feel that at last I am away from America,--a satisfaction that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. But here in Florence, and in the summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I have escaped from all my old tracks and am really remote. "I like my present residence immensely. The house stands on a hill, overlooking Florence, and is big enough to quarter a regiment; insomuch that each member of the family, including servants, has a separate suite of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of upper rooms, into which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions. "At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower haunted by the ghost of a monk, who was confined there in the thirteenth century, previous to being burned at the stake in the principal square of Florence. I hire this villa, tower and all, at twenty-eight dollars a month; but I mean to take it away bodily and clap it into a romance which I have in my head ready to be written out." Turning to the topic of home, he went on: "After so long an absence (more than five years already, which will be six before you see me at the Old Corner), it is not altogether delightful to think of returning. Everybody will be changed, and I, myself, no doubt, as much as anybody.... It won't do. I shall be forced to come back again and take refuge in a London lodging. London is like the grave in one respect,--any man can make himself at home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London. "Speaking of the grave reminds me of old age and other disagreeable matters, and I would remark that one grows old in Italy twice or three times as fast as in other countries. I have three gray hairs now for one that I brought from England, and I shall look venerable indeed by the time I return next summer."