Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/186

Rh 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 ong. 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 “hall Rome" to see the manæuvres 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 débris 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, mediæval, and modern. And here we come upon the record of those first im-