and do now still more, after five or six mild English Decembers.

By and by, two young ladies came in,--Miss Bremen's neighbors, it
seemed,--fresh from a long walk on the campagna, fresh and weary at the
same time. One apparently was German, and the other French, and they
brought her an offering of flowers, and chattered to her with
affectionate vivacity; and, as we were about taking leave, Miss Bremer
asked them to accompany her and us on a visit to the edge of the Tarpeian
Rock. Before we left the room, she took a bunch of roses that were in a
vase, and gave them to Miss Shepard, who told her that she should make
her six sisters happy by giving one to each. Then we went down the
intricate stairs, and, emerging into the garden, walked round the brow of
the hill, which plunges headlong with exceeding abruptness; but, so far
as I could see in the moonlight, is no longer quite a precipice. Then
we re-entered the house, and went up stairs and down again, through
intricate passages, till we got into the street, which was still peopled
with the ragamuffins who infest and burrow in that part of Rome. We
returned through an archway, and descended the broad flight of steps into
the piazza of the Capitol; and from the extremity of it, just at the head
of the long graded way, where Castor and Pollux and the old milestones
stand, we turned to the left, and followed a somewhat winding path, till
we came into the court of a palace. This court is bordered by a parapet,
leaning over which we saw the sheer precipice of the Tarpeian Rock, about
the height of a four-story house. . . . .

On the edge of this, before we left the court, Miss Bremer bade us
farewell, kissing my wife most affectionately on each cheek, . . . . and
then turning towards myself, . . . . she pressed my hand, and we parted,
probably never to meet again. God bless her good heart! . . . . She is a
most amiable little woman, worthy to be the maiden aunt of the whole