archduchesses were sweet. But with her politics were always an affair
of the heart,--as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning
from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in
every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so
thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she
generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it
must be acknowledged that she was emotional. I can remember now her
books, and can see her at her pursuits. The poets she loved best
were Dante and Spenser. But she raved also of him of whom all such
ladies were raving then, and rejoiced in the popularity and wept
over the persecution of Lord Byron. She was among those who seized
with avidity on the novels, as they came out, of the then unknown
Scott, and who could still talk of the triumphs of Miss Edgeworth.
With the literature of the day she was familiar, and with the poets
of the past. Of other reading I do not think she had mastered much.
Her life, I take it, though latterly clouded by many troubles, was
easy, luxurious, and idle, till my father's affairs and her own
aspirations sent her to America. She had dear friends among literary
people, of whom I remember Mathias, Henry Milman, and Miss Landon;
but till long after middle life she never herself wrote a line for
publication.

In 1827 she went to America, having been partly instigated by the
social and communistic ideas of a lady whom I well remember,--a
certain Miss Wright,--who was, I think, the first of the American
female lecturers. Her chief desire, however, was to establish
my brother Henry; and perhaps joined with that was the additional
object of breaking up her English home without pleading broken
fortunes to all the world. At Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio,
she built a bazaar, and I fancy lost all the money which may have