not the Pilgrim Fathers have sworn to the 22d, if they had known that ever a Pope of Rome would go for the 21st? Surely the Babe Unborn should not suffer for the want of accurate astronomical knowledge in them of old time. That other mythological character, the Oldest Inhabitant, should rather be held responsible as approaching nearer to a contemporaneousness with the guilty. However, till this matter is settled, I shall keep it to myself whether the 21st or the 22d were the day of his kindly nativity."

1

Lowell had been longing for a holiday; Mrs. Lowell's health, never robust, gave him now new cause of solicitude; the death of his mother severed one special cord that would tie him to his home, and thus, in the spring of 1851, it was decided to carry out a design formed more than once before, and spend a year at least in Europe. The Lowells tried to persuade the Gays to accompany them, but without success. "We are going," Lowell wrote to Gay, "in a fine ship which will sail from Boston on the 1st July. She was built for a packet, has fine accommodations, and will land us at Genoa — a very fit spot for us New-Worlders to land at and make our first discovery of the Old.

À Castilla y à Leon

(To Yankees also be it known)

1 Whether or no this started Mr. Gay on an historical investigation, he did inquire into the matter; for thirty years later he published in the Atlantic for November, 1881, an article entitled, "When did the Pilgrim Fathers land at Plymouth?" in which he established to his own satisfaction that the first landing was neither on the 21st or 22d, but on the 4th of January, 1621.

Nuevo Mundo dió Colon :

And so we Western men owe a

Kind of debt to Genoa.

Also people can live like princes (only more respectably) in Italy on fifteen hundred a year. We are going to travel on our own land. That is, we shall spend at the rate of about ten acres a year, selling our birthrights as we go along for messes of European pottage. Well, Raphael and the rest of them are worth it. My plan is to sit down in Florence (where, at least, the coral and bells and the gutta-percha dogs will be cheaper) till I have cut my eye (talian) teeth. Tuscany must be a good place for that. Then I shall be able to travel about without being too monstrously cheated."