"For thou hast passed all chance of human life,
And not again to thee shall beauty die."

It is thirty-three years in July, I believe, since I first saw
her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of
a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I
can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful
wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from
Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar,
and its disappointment. Her goodness to me and to my friends was
ever perfect, and all Americans have agreed in her praise.
Elizabeth Hoar remembers her with entire sympathy and regard.

I could heartily wish to see you for an hour in these lonely
days. Your friends, I know, will approach you as tenderly as
friends can; and I can believe that labor--all whose precious
secrets you know--will prove a consoler,--though it cannot quite
avail, for she was the rest that rewarded labor. It is good that
you are strong, and built for endurance. Nor will you shun to
consult the awful oracles which in these hours of tenderness are
sometimes vouchsafed. If to any, to you.

I rejoice that she stayed to enjoy the knowledge of your good day
at Edinburgh, which is a leaf we would not spare from your book
of life. It was a right manly speech to be so made, and is a
voucher of unbroken strength,--and the surroundings, as I learn,
were all the happiest,--with no hint of change.

I pray you bear in mind your own counsels. Long years you must
still achieve, and, I hope, neither grief nor weariness will let