ution to face my difficulties
myself, and try to give only what was pleasant to others; but now that
my courage has fairly given way, and the fatigue of life is beyond my
strength, I do not prize myself, or expect others to prize me.

Some years ago, I thought you very unjust, because you did not lend
full faith to my spiritual experiences; but I see you were quite
right. I thought I had tasted of the true elixir, and that the want
of daily bread, or the pangs of imprisonment, would never make me a
complaining beggar. A widow, I expected still to have the cruse full
for others. Those were glorious hours, and angels certainly visited
me; but there must have been too much earth,--too much taint of
weakness and folly, so that baptism did not suffice. I know now those
same things, but at present they are words, not living spells.

I hear, at this moment, the clock of the Church del Purgatorio
telling noon in this mountain solitude. Snow yet lingers on these
mountain-tops, after forty days of hottest sunshine, last night broken
by a few clouds, prefatory to a thunder storm this morning. It has
been so hot here, that even the peasant in the field says, "_Non porro
piu resistere_," and slumbers in the shade, rather than the sun. I
love to see their patriarchal ways of guarding the sheep and tilling
the fields. They are a simple race. Remote from the corruptions of
foreign travel, they do not ask for money, but smile upon and bless me
as I pass,--for the Italians love me; they say I am so "_simpatica._"
I never see any English or Americans, and now think wholly in Italian:
only the surgeon who bled me, the other day, was proud to speak a
little French, which he had learned at Tunis! The ignorance of this
people is amusing. I am to them a divine visitant,--an instructive
Ceres,--telling them wonderful tales of foreign customs, and even
legends of the lives of their own saints. They are people whom I could
love and live with. Bread and grapes among them would suffice me.

TO HER MOTHER.

_Rome, Nov_. 16, 1848.--* * * Of other circumstances which complicate
my position I cannot write. Were you here, I would confide in you
fully, and have more than once, in the silence of the night, recited
to you those most strange and romantic chapters in the story of my sad
life. At one time when I thought I might die, I empowered a person,
who has given me, as far as possible to him, the aid and sympathy of
a brother, to communicate