h, lie weary
cares, and it is not easy to keep alight the sacred fire."

In Miss Bremer's opinion the appearance was not deceptive. According to
what she heard from many of his friends, Cavour occupied his seat with
tolerable ease, and without undue strain discharged his duties as First
Minister of Piedmont, and the shaper of its destiny. The fact was, that
his nature was that of a statesman; he was born, not made, and performed
his work as Mozart executed his symphonies or Raphael painted his
pictures, without torturing his brains, without any special difficulty.
In his sphere of duty he was as much a genius and an artist as they
were.

At parting she earnestly urged him to give juster laws to the women of
Piedmont, who, in all that appertained to the right of inheritance, were
greatly inferior to men. M. de Cavour laughed, half cynically, as at an
expression called forth by a certain _esprit de corps_; but afterwards
he discoursed seriously on the difficulties which, particularly amongst
an agricultural population, stood in the way of an equal right of
inheritance. Miss Bremer listened with greater pleasure when he added,
with the accent of conviction, that in any case equal right of
inheritance would become law, sooner or later, amongst them. It existed
in the spirit and tendency of all their legislation, and, besides, it
was right.[14]

[Illustration: THE SIMPLON.]

It was in the spring of 1859 that Miss Bremer set out for the East. The
voyage, to one of so vivid an imagination and of such profound religious
impressions, was full of living interest. She spent long, solitary
hours on the deck of the vessel that conveyed her, and allowed her fancy
free course over that sea with a thousand historic memories--the
Mediterranean. With vigilant eye she watched the waves as they rolled
past with glittering crests of foam, and the lights and shadows which
chased one another in swift succession over the purple expanse, as
sunshine or cloud rested on the bosom of the sapphire sky.

"The heavens," she exclaims, "declare the glory of God, and the
firmament sheweth His handiwork. Words are powerless to describe the
beauty of the day, and the scene which developed before me. We were
sailing on the sea of Syria towards the East--the country of the
morning--and what a brightness shone around us! I think that never
before had I seen the sun so luminous, so instinct with flame, or the
sky and the sea so transparent. The latter i