with their lecturer, gave the most lively demonstrations of approval and pleasure. Marcus S. and some other gentlemen of Brooklyn invited Emerson to give these lectures, and I thus saw him there several times. Perhaps we may never meet again. But I am glad to have seen him.
20th.—We have had two quiet beautiful evenings, for I do not this time either receive visits, or accept invitations, unless exceptionally; I must rest. My friends and I have therefore been alone, and we have spent the evenings in reading and conversation. I have read a letter which they have received from Margaret Fuller, now the Marchioness Ossoli, for her marriage is now divulged, and her advocate, Mr. W. R., was perfectly right. Madame Ossoli is now, with her husband and child, on her way to America, where she will take up her residence. And on board the same vessel is also that young man who travelled to Petersburg, and gave the Emperor of Russia the acorn. Her last letter is from Gibraltar, and describes the affectingly beautiful evening when the body of the captain—he had died of small-pox—was lowered into the sea, above which the evening sun descended brilliantly, and small craft lay with white sails outspread like the wings of angels. A certain melancholy breathes through the letter, and a thoroughly noble tone of mind, with no trace whatever of that insolent and proud spirit which various things had led me to expect in her. In her letter to Rebecca she spoke of her joy as a mother, and of her beautiful child, in the most touching manner. “I can hardly understand my own happiness,” she says in one place; “I am the mother of an immortal being,—‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ ” That does not sound much like pride! She has sent home a box of presents and souvenirs for her friends, " in case I should not again see my father-land,” says she. She has commenced the voyage with joyless presentiments; and now that the good captain of the vessel is dead, during the voyage they seem to increase.
