gleam of a mildly glorious sunset; not so pompous and magnificent as many
that I have seen in America, but softer and sweeter in all its changes.
As its lovely hues died slowly away, the half-moon shone out brighter and
brighter; for there was not a cloud in the sky, and it seemed like the
moonlight of my younger days. In the garden, beneath her window, verging
upon the Tarpeian Rock, there was shrubbery and one large tree, softening
the brow of the famous precipice, adown which the old Romans used to
fling their traitors, or sometimes, indeed, their patriots.

Miss Bremer talked plentifully in her strange manner,--good English
enough for a foreigner, but so oddly intonated and accented, that it is
impossible to be sure of more than one word in ten. Being so little
comprehensible, it is very singular how she contrives to make her
auditors so perfectly certain, as they are, that she is talking the best
sense, and in the kindliest spirit. There is no better heart than hers,
and not many sounder heads; and a little touch of sentiment comes
delightfully in, mixed up with a quick and delicate humor and the most
perfect simplicity. There is also a very pleasant atmosphere of
maidenhood about her; we are sensible of a freshness and odor of the
morning still in this little withered rose,--its recompense for never
having been gathered and worn, but only diffusing fragrance on its stem.
I forget mainly what we talked about,--a good deal about art, of course,
although that is a subject of which Miss Bremer evidently knows nothing.
Once we spoke of fleas,--insects that, in Rome, come home to everybody's
business and bosom, and are so common and inevitable, that no delicacy is
felt about alluding to the sufferings they inflict. Poor little Miss
Bremer was tormented with one while turning out our tea. . . . . She
talked, among other things, of the winters in Sweden, and said that she
liked them, long and severe as they are; and this made me feel ashamed of
dreading the winters of New England, as I did before coming from home,