ent, isolate
herself.

* * * * *

Of her return to Rome, Margaret says: "All mean things were forgotten in
the joy that rushed over me like a flood." The difference between a
sight-seeing tour and a winter's residence in such a place is indeed
like that between a chance acquaintance and an intimate one. Settled in
a pleasant apartment on the Corso, "in a house of loving Italians,"
Margaret promised herself a winter of "tranquil companionship" with what
she calls "the true Rome."

She did not find the Italian autumn beautiful, as she had expected, but
she enjoyed the October _festas_ of the Trasteverini, and went with
"half Rome" to see the manoeuvres of the Civic Guard on the Campagna,
near the tomb of Cecilia Metella.

To the music of the "Bolognese March" six thousand Romans moved in
battle array, in full sight of the grandiose debris of the heroic time.

Some sight-seeing Margaret still undertook, as we learn from a letter
dated November 17, in which she speaks of going about "in a coach with
several people," and confesses that she dissipates her thoughts on
outward beauty. Such was her delight, at this time, in the "atmosphere
of the European mind," that she even wished, for a time, to be delivered
from the sound of the English language.

The beginning of this winter was, as it usually is in Italy, a season of
fine weather. On the 17th of December Margaret rises to bask in
beneficent floods of sunlight, and to find upon her table the roses and
grapes which, in New England, would have been costly hot-house luxuries.
Her letter of this date is full of her delight in having penetrated from
the outer aspect to the heart of Rome, classic, mediaeval, and modern.
And here we come upon the record of those first impressions concerning
which we latterly indulged in some speculation.

"Ah! how joyful to see once more this Rome, instead of the pitiful,
peddling, Anglicized Rome first viewed in unutterable dismay from the
_coupe_ of the vettura,--a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses,
cheating chambermaids, vilest _valets de place_, and fleas! A Niobe of
nations indeed! Ah! why (secretly the heart blasphemed) did the sun omit
to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell
beneath his ray?"

All this had now disappeared for Margaret, and a new enchantment had
taken the place of the old illusion and disappointment. For she was now
able to disentangle the strange