, that in Boston
she had regarded Margaret as a person on intellectual stilts, with a
large share of arrogance, and little sweetness of temper; and adds:
'How unlike to this was she now!--so delicate, so simple, confiding,
and affectionate; with a true womanly heart and soul, sensitive and
generous, and, what was to me a still greater surprise, possessed of
so broad a charity, that she could cover with its mantle the faults
and defects of all about her.' Her devotion to her husband, and her
passionate attachment to her little Angelo, were exhibited in the
liveliest colour: the influence she exercised, too, by love and
sympathy, over Italians of every class with whom she came in contact,
appears of a kind more tender, chastened, and womanly than that which
previously characterised her. When the republican cause at Rome left
no hope of present restoration, Margaret found a tranquil refuge in
Florence, devoting her mornings to literary labours, and her evenings
to social intercourse with cultivated natives and a few foreign
visitors, among whom the Brownings occupied a distinguished place.
Greatly straitened in means at this time, the repose she and her
husband enjoyed at Florence, in their small and scantily-furnished
room, seems to have been peculiarly grateful to both. Soon, however,
arrangements were made for their departure to the United States; for
Margaret was heart-weary at the political reaction in Europe, and the
pecuniary expediency of publishing to advantage her chronicles of the
revolution, seconded by a yearning to see her family and friends once
more, constrained to this step.

From motives of economy, they took passage in a merchantman from
Leghorn, the _Elizabeth_, the expense being one-half what a return by
way of France would have been. The remonstrances of her acquaintance,
founded on the fatigues of a two months' voyage--the comparative
insecurity of such a bark--the exposed position of the cabin (on
deck)--and so on, were not unaided by Margaret's own presentiments.
Ossoli, when a boy, had been told by a fortune-teller, to 'beware of
the sea,' and this was the first ship he had ever set his foot in. In
a letter where she describes herself 'suffering, as never before, all
the horrors of indecision,' his wife expresses a fervent prayer that
it 'may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced
illness, or amid the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and
I may go together, and that