which she continued for so many years, confined to one
large and commodious but darkened chamber, admitting only her
own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself,
have often joyfully travelled five-and-forty miles to see her,
and returned the same evening without entering another house),
reading almost every book worth reading in almost every
language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of
which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health
improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and
immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at
Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of
seeing her once more in London with a lovely boy at her knee,
almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles,
of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on
mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven
continue to her such health and such happiness!"

THE HAPPINESS OF OYSTERS.

The last _Westminster Review_ contains a pleasant scientific article
under the title of "Shell Fish, their Ways and Works," in which the
subject so much debated lately, whether the lower orders of animals are
capable of reason, has some new and amusing illustrations. Generous and
honestly disposed lovers of good dinners will be gratified with the
notion that _oysters_ receive as well as communicate a degree of
happiness. The reviewer treats the subject in the following luminous
manner:

"And then the oyster itself--the soul and body of the shell--is
there no philosophy in him or her? For now we know that oysters
are really he and she, and that Bishop Sprat, when he gravely
proposed the study of oyster-beds as a pursuit worthy of the
sages who, under the guidance of his co-Bishop, Wilkins, and
Sir Christopher Wren, were laying the foundation stones of the
Royal Society, was not so far wrong when he discriminated
between lady and gentleman oysters. The worthy suggester, it is
true, knew no better than to separate them according to the
color of their beards; as great a fallacy, as if, in these days
of Bloomerism, we should propose to distinguish between males
and females by the fashion of their waistcoats or color of
their pantaloons; or, before this last great innovation of
dress, to, diagnose betwe