December, 1848.—­I felt much what you wrote, “if it were well with my heart.”  How seldom it is that a mortal is permitted to enjoy a paradisaical scene, unhaunted by some painful vision from the past or the future!  With me, too, dark clouds of care and sorrow have sometimes blotted out the sunshine.  I have not lost from my side an only sister, but have been severed from some visions still so dear, they looked almost like hopes.  The future seems too difficult for me.  I have been as happy as I could, and I feel that this summer, as last, had I been with my country folks, the picture of Italy would not have been so lively to me.  Now I have been quite off the beaten track of travel, have seen, thought, spoken, dreamed only what is Italian.  I have learned much, received many strong and clear impressions.  While among the mountains, I was for a good while quite alone, except for occasional chat with the contadine, who wanted to know if Pius IX. was not un gran carbonaro!—­a reputation which he surely ought to have forfeited by this time.  About me they were disturbed:  “E sempre sola soletta,” they said, “eh perche?”

Later, I made one of those accidental acquaintances, such as I have spoken of to you in my life of Lombardy, which may be called romantic:  two brothers, elderly men, the last of a very noble family, formerly lords of many castles, still of more than one; both unmarried, men of great polish and culture.  None of the consequences ensued that would in romances:  they did not any way adopt me, nor give me a casket of diamonds, nor any of their pictures, among which were originals by several of the greatest masters, nor their rich cabinets, nor miniatures on agate, nor carving in wood and ivory.  They only showed me their things, and their family archives of more than a hundred volumes, (containing most interesting documents about Poland, where four of their ancestors were nuncios,) manuscript letters from Tasso, and the like.  With comments on these, and legendary lore enough to furnish Cooper or Walter Scott with a thousand romances, they enriched me; unhappily, I shall never have the strength or talent to make due use of it.  I was sorry to leave them, for now I have recrossed the frontier into the Roman States.  I will not tell you where,—­I know not that I shall ever tell where,—­these months have been passed.  The great Goethe hid thus in Italy; “Then,” said he, “I did indeed feel alone,—­when no former friend could form an idea where I was.”  Why should not ——­ and I enjoy this fantastic luxury of incognito also, when we can so much more easily?