From the date of their marriage up to 1827, when my mother went
to America, my father's affairs had always been going down in the
world. She had loved society, affecting a somewhat liberal role
and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from
the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles.
An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from
the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate,
or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to
the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality
of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had
been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that
archduchesses were sweet. But with her politics were always an affair
of the heart,--as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning
from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in
every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so
thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she
generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it
must be acknowledged that she was emotional. I can remember now her
books, and can see her at her pursuits. The poets she loved best
were Dante and Spenser. But she raved also of him of whom all such
ladies were raving then, and rejoiced in the popularity and wept
over the persecution of Lord Byron.
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