life in Philadelphia, in deference to her delicate lungs. They lived with a Quaker family named Lamborn, and from Dr. Lamborn, their son, I heard many details later on of that year of happiness. James delighted to see Maria dress in the Quaker garb, which was becoming to her, and used to surprise the Quaker circle invited to tea by entering suddenly and kissing the demure Quaker sister — a joke which never failed to delight Mrs. Lamborn.
I did not see Mrs. Lowell after the death of her children, or when disease had made its ravages; so I retain, as few people can, a memory of that transcendent loveliness of her youth. Of Mr. Lowell I continued to see a great deal, and after her death he sent me a volume of her poems, and her portrait (from one by Paige). He also asked to see several letters she had written to me after the death of her children, when he was calling at my house in New York. I left him alone with them in my parlor, and he took his leave without bidding me adieu. He afterwards wrote me one of his choice letters, thanking me, and adding, "Which was most beautiful, her body or her soul?" He often dined with me in New York, bringing with him the rarefied air of Cambridge, and of all the recent good things said by Charles Norton, Agassiz, Holmes, James T. Fields, John Holmes, and the Illuminati generally.
What a society of wits and scholars that was! I remember, in my visits to Boston, meeting them all, at dinners, teas, at the opera and theatre. Imagine the sensation of having Mr. Prescott come and talk to one at the opera!
My father took my mother, myself, and Miss Lois White (the heroine of the moss-agate poem) up to Lake Superior in the summer of one of the late forties. We saw
