s Margaret. In that
catastrophe, were swallowed up hopes sacredly cherished by her through
weary months, at the risk of all she most prized.

Soon after the entrance of the French, she wrote thus, to the resident
Envoy of the United States:

My dear Mr. Cass,--I beg you to come and see me, and give me your
counsel, and, if need be, your aid, to get away from Rome. From what
I hear this morning, I fear we may be once more shut up here; and I
shall die, to be again separated from what I hold most dear. There
are, as yet, no horses on the way we want to go, or we should post
immediately.

You may feel, like me, sad, in these last moments, to leave this
injured Rome. So many noble hearts I abandon here, whose woes I have
known! I feel, if I could not aid, I might soothe. But for my child, I
would not go, till some men, now sick, know whether they shall live or
die.

* * * * *

Her child! Where was he? In RIETI,--at the foot of the Umbrian
Apennines,--a day's journey to the north-east of Rome. Thither
Margaret escaped with her husband, and thence she wrote the following
letter:

Dearest Mother,--I received your letter a few hours before leaving
Rome. Like all of yours, it refreshed me, and gave me as much
satisfaction as anything could, at that sad time. Its spirit is
of eternity, and befits an epoch when wickedness and perfidy so
impudently triumph, and the best blood of the generous and honorable
is poured out like water, seemingly in vain.

I cannot tell you what I suffered to abandon the wounded to the care
of their mean foes; to see the young men, that were faithful to their
vows, hunted from their homes,--hunted like wild beasts; denied a
refuge in every civilized land. Many of those I loved are sunk to the
bottom of the sea, by Austrian cannon, or will be shot. Others are in
penury, grief, and exile. May God give due recompense for all that has
been endured!

My mind still agitated, and my spirits worn out, I have not felt like
writing to any one. Yet the magnificent summer does not smile quite
in vain for me. Much exercise in the open air, living much on milk
and fruit, have recruited my health, and I am regaining the habit of
sleep, which a month of nightly cannonade in Rome had destroyed.

* * * * *

Receiving, a few days since, a packet of letters from America, I
opened them with more feeling of hope and good cheer, than for a long
time p