It was about this time that he was made an Hon.

Member of the Florentine Academy.
He re-crossed the Alps, and settled to his work on political economy at Mornex, where he spent the winter except for a short run home, which gave him the opportunity of addressing the Working Men's College on November 29.
His retreat is described in one of his letters home: "MORNEX, _August_ 31 (1862).
"MY DEAREST MOTHER, "This ought to arrive on the evening before your birthday: it is not possible to reach you in the morning, not even by telegraph as I once did from Mont Cenis, for--( may Heaven be devoutly thanked therefore)--there are yet on Mont Saleve neither rails nor wires....
"The place I have got to is at the end of all carriage-roads, and I am not yet strong enough to get farther, on foot, than a five or six miles' circle, within which is assuredly no house to my mind.

I cast, at first, somewhat longing eyes on a true Savoyard chateau--notable for its lovely garden and orchard--and its unspoiled, unrestored, arched gateway between two round turrets, and Gothic-windowed keep.

But on examination of the interior--finding the walls, though six feet thick, rent to the foundation--and as cold as rocks, and the floors all sodden through with walnut oil and rotten-apple juice--heaps of the farm stores having been left to decay in the ci-devant drawing room, I gave up all medieval ideas, for which the long-legged black pigs who lived like gentlemen at ease in the passage, and the bats and spiders who divided between them the corners of the turret-stair, have reason--if they knew it--to be thankful.
"The worst of it is that I never had the gift, nor have I now the energy, to _make_ anything of a place; so that I shall have to put up with almost anything I can find that is healthily habitable in a good situation.

Meantime, the air here being delicious and the rooms good enough for use and comfort, I am not troubling myself much, but trying to put myself into better health and humour; in which I have already a little succeeded." After describing the flowers of the Saleve he continues: "My Father would be quite wild at the 'view' from the garden terrace--but he would be disgusted at the shut in feeling of the house, which is in fact as much shut in as our old Herne Hill one; only to get the 'view' I have but to go as far down the garden as to our old 'mulberry tree.' By the way there's a magnificent mulberry tree, as big as a common walnut, covered with black and red fruit on the other side of the road.