send me testify to our tastes in common. For the last five or six years after caring nothing for philosophy all my life, except in the exquisite literary setting of Plato-I have acquired a deep and intense passion for Cicero's philosophical writings. Perhaps it is that he was an old public man, who had gone through all the most virile and stirring human experiences, and had retained his eagerness for truth and his lofty views of man's destiny. His ethical illustrations are all taken from high political and warlike events, and the diction is divine, and inspiring and suggestive as no other writing. I have brought here the 'Tusculan Disputations,' and the 'De Naturâ Deorum'; and in truth I now regard this wonderful city, which I know as perhaps none but specialists know it, with a perceptibly increased interest and respect on Cicero's account.

We have a glorious view from a fifth floor window on the Pincian hill, straight across the heart of Rome. On the Janiculan summit opposite-where no Pope or Emperor ever was allowed to be placed-Garibaldi sits on his charger, nobly sculptured in bronze, overlooking all the city from the point where he fought the French in 1849. I saw him once carried by four gens d'armes, within three feet of me; one by each arm, and one with an arm under each knee. It was an arrest, by the Italian authorities, to which he submitted in order to save bloodshed after the battle of Mentana. And now he stands there, the master of all he sees; and he deserves it, too; for though his material did not allow him any certainty of military success, he had the sacred fire which kept everything alive till the work was done. Last night we ate our Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce with with your Ambassador and Ambassadress―very old friends of ours. They lived for many years next door to us in London. How my wife and I would have wished you there! and what I would give to take you, as I took John Morley, to the Forum and the Palatine!! Nine out of ten people at the sights here are Americans; very humble folk, especially the women, but most intelligent and eager, and essentially refined. It is a

pleasure to see them poring over their guide-books and reading them aloud to each other.

WELCOMBE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON,
January 8, 1906.

On our return from Italy I found the books you had been good enough to send me; and primarily the "American Hunter," copy No. 3, which in itself is an honor. That honor is greatly enhanced by the inscription which you have written. The portrait is a great acquisition. It could not be improved; and, if for no other reason, the book would be to me a valued possession. But I like it extremely, and have enjoyed every word of it. The hunting books I care for I have always cared for much; but they are very few, and this is among the very best. The whole about the cougars is as good as it possibly can be; and there is a melancholy romance about the Yellowstone Park which produced a great impression on me. I never miss spending five minutes, when I visit our Zoological Gardens, in front of the Bisons. What a sequence of ideas the sight of those animals presents! But I think your bears round the refuse in the hotels are almost a more significant testimony to the irresistible, unideal, triumph of civilization. However, romance has lasted my time; and the last six weeks have proved to me that Rome at any rate is romantic as ever. To have produced Rome is, and I suppose always will remain, the most remarkable feat accomplished by mankind. It is a place where no one can feel old, and no one unhappy.

Have you got 'Sponge's Sporting Tour'? Many years ago I had a bad Typhoid fever; and, as then was the custom, it was concealed from me what was the matter with me. But I gradually lost all interest in books, and in most other human things; when suddenly there came on me a craving to read 'Sponge,' which I had read a dozen times, and have read several times since; and I even then read it with delight. I never understand how 'Jorrocks' can be placed on a level with it. Macaulay-whose knowledge of a horse was confined to a pretty clear recognition of the

difference between its head and its tail-was much interested in 'Sponge.' If you have read the book, I will send you something else which you may like.

ROOSEVELT TO TREVELYAN

WHITE HOUSE, January 22, 1906.

Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt and I are both as fond as you are of the immortal 'Soapy Sponge'; but I shall be very grateful if you will send me that copy, because the only copy we have in the house is one Mrs. Roosevelt inherited from her father. It is a rather cheap American edition, though with the John Leech pictures, and we have read it until it has practically tumbled to pieces. So you see I am greedily closing with your offer.

I find it a great comfort to like all kinds of books, and to be able to get half an hour or an hour's complete rest and complete detachment from the fighting of the moment, by plunging into the genius and misdeeds of Marlborough, or the wicked perversity of James II, or the brilliant battle for human freedom fought by Fox-or in short, anything that Macaulay wrote or that you have written, or any one of the novels of Scott and of some of the novels of Thackeray and Dickens; or to turn to Hawthorne or Poe; or to Longfellow, who I think has been underestimated of late years, by the way.

TREVELYAN TO ROOSEVELT

LONDON, March 15, 1906.

I have been an unconscionable time in sending you 'Soapy Sponge'; but it was not my fault. As long as I was in the country I could not get it in the right shape. The new reprints had the engravings reduced in size, and the type the dear old type-altered. Soon after my arrival in London I picked up the right edition at a book stall, and since then have been getting it bound.

CHAPTER XIII

ROOSEVELT AND TREVELYAN-CONCLUDED

IN November, 1906, President Roosevelt made a visit to the Isthmus of Panama, to inspect the work of building the canal, making the journey on the battleship Louisiana. While on the return trip he wrote a letter, November 23, to Trevelyan, in which, after describing what he had seen on the Isthmus, he said:

"In a very amusing and very kindly, and on the whole not unjust book in which Captain Younghusband describes the Philippines, he spoke of our army out there as looking not like an army in the European sense but like the inhabitants of a Rocky Mountain mining town. I know just what he meant, and the comparison was not unjust, and in some ways was more exact than he realized. Our army in service now wears a flannel shirt, light or heavy khaki trousers, leggins and a soft slouch hat, and each man on the average believes in his work and has much power of initiative. Well, in dress and traits the five thousand men on the Isthmus keep making me think of our army as I have actually seen it busily at work at some half war-like, half administrative problem. Of course there are many exceptions, but on the average the white man on the Isthmus feels that he is doing a big job which will reflect credit on the country, and is working with hearty good will. He is well housed and well fed. He often has his wife and children with him, in which case he lives in a really delightful cottage, the home life being just such as one reads about in Octave Thanet's stories of the West and of American labor people.

"I do not like a sea voyage myself, though of course I am interested very much in this great battleship and in her

officers and crew. The other day we dined at the chief petty officers' mess, and the men are of the type which make the strength of our navy and of yours.

"I have had a good deal of time for reading, naturally, and among other things have gone over Milton's prose works. What a radical republican, and what a staunch partisan, and what an intense Protestant the fine old fellow was; subject to the inevitable limitations of his time and place, he was curiously modern too. He advocated liberty of conscience to a degree that few were then able to advocate, or at least few of those who were not only philosophers like Milton, but also like Milton in active public life, and his plea for liberty of the press is good reading now. His essay on divorce is curious rather than convincing, and while it is extremely modern in some ways it is not modern at all in the contemptuous arrogance of its attitude toward women. Personally I like his 'Eikonoklastes,' but then I am a radical about punishing people like Charles the First or Jefferson Davis. It may be very unwise to kill either, but it is eminently righteous to do so-so far, that is, as anything is righteous which is not in its deepest and truest sense also expedient.

"I have also been reading Dill's account of Roman society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. You, my dear Sir, who are so blessed as to read all the best of the Greeks or Latins in the original must not look down too scornfully upon us who have to make believe that we are contented with Emerson's view of translations. I am now trying to get some really good English editions of Tacitus. I want to see if it is possible to pick up some old edition with good print and good binding.

"After I read Milton and Tacitus until I feel that I can stand them no longer I devour short stories or novels. In the novels I am sorry to say I usually have to go back to those I have read already."

To this letter Trevelyan replied: