for a year past.

I saw her frequently at these rooms, where, surrounded by her books
and papers, she used to devote her mornings to her literary labors.
Once or twice I called in the morning, and found her quite immersed
in manuscripts and journals. Her evenings were passed usually in
the society of her friends, at her own rooms, or at theirs. With the
pleasant circle of Americans, then living in Florence, she was on the
best terms, and though she seemed always to bring with her her own
most intimate society, and never to be quite free from the company of
busy thoughts, and the cares to which her life had introduced her,
she was always cheerful, and her remarkable powers of conversation
subserved on all occasions the kindliest, purposes of good-will in
social intercourse.

The friends with whom she seemed to be on the terms of most sympathy,
were an Italian lady, the Marchesa Arconati Visconti,[A]--the
exquisite sweetness of whose voice interpreted, even to those who knew
her only as a transient acquaintance, the harmony of her nature,--and
some English residents in Florence, among whom I need only name Mr.
and Mrs. Browning, to satisfy the most anxious friends of Madame
Ossoli that the last months of her Italian life were cheered by all
the light that communion with gifted and noble natures could afford.

The Marchesa Arconati used to persuade Madame Ossoli to occasional
excursions with her into the environs of Florence, and she passed some
days of the beautiful spring weather at the villa of that lady.

Her delight in nature seemed to be a source of great comfort and
strength to her. I shall not easily forget the account she gave me, on
the evening of one delicious Sunday in April, of a walk which she had
taken with her husband in the afternoon of that day, to the hill of
San Miniato. The amethystine beauty of the Apennines,--the
cypress trees that sentinel the way up to the ancient and deserted
church,--the church itself, standing high and lonely on its hill,
begirt with the vine-clad, crumbling walls of Michel Angelo,--the
repose of the dome-crowned city in the vale below,--seemed to have
wrought their impression with peculiar force upon her mind that
afternoon. On their way home, they had entered the conventual church
that stands half way up the hill, just as the vesper service was
beginning, and she spoke of the simple spirit of devotion that filled
the place, and of the gentle wonder with which, to use her