perity, it was all very well for us to turn her portrait of him with his face to the wall, as the best mode of notifying to her that we had called at the Villa Giglione or the Villa Castellani—she moved to the latter in 1868—and had not found her at home. But when the famous points now's began to show themselves on the imperial horizon, it became necessary to treat the subject with gravity; and when, finally, the Second Empire disappeared amid the smoke and surrender of Sedan, it had to be avoided altogether. I grieve to think that so loving and generous a soul should have experienced real grief from what I cannot but regard as a well-merited catastrophe. That it caused her suffering deep and long, I know; and it is certainly remarkable that her own death, almost a sudden one, should have occurred immediately after the announcement of that of the ex-Emperor. The last lines she ever wrote were on that event; and they are omitted from this volume, not only because the poem was left incomplete, but because I have found much of it, even as far as it goes, quite undecipherable.
Though Italy was the land of her adoption, she entertained so warm a love for her English friends, that she visited this country as often as she could afford to do so. But, as she used to say, it took her three years to get her finances in order again, after such an indulgence, But even whilst here, her heart was at Bellosguardo; and, as Byron makes Dante say in his exile she
