The ascent of the steep and rugged path
of science has not unfitted her for the drawing-room circle; the hours
of devotion to close study have not been incompatible with the duties
of the wife and the mother; the mind that has turned to rigid
demonstration has not thereby lost its faith in the truths which
figures will not prove. "I have no doubt," said she, in speaking of the
heavenly bodies, "that in another state of existence we shall know more
about these things."
ROBA DI ROMA.
MAY IN ROME.
May has come again,--"the delicate-footed May," her feet hidden in
flowers as she wanders over the Campagna, and the cool breeze of the
Campagna blowing back her loosened hair. She calls to us from the open
fields to leave the wells of damp churches and shadowy streets, and to
come abroad and meet her where the mountains look down from roseate
heights of vanishing snow upon plains of waving grain. The hedges have
put on their best draperies of leaves and flowers, and, girdled in at
their waist by double osier bands, stagger luxuriantly along the road
like a drunken Bacchanal procession, crowned with festive ivy, and
holding aloft their snowy clusters of elder-blossoms like _thyrsi_.
Among their green robes may be seen thousands of beautiful
wild-flowers,--the sweet-scented laurustinus, all sorts of running
vetches and wild sweet-pea, the delicate vases of dewy morning-glories,
clusters of eglantine or sweetbrier roses, fragrant acacia-blossoms
covered with bees and buzzing flies, the gold of glowing gorses, and
scores of purple and yellow flowers, of which I know not the names.
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