Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

her iersonalftg
she exists in the spirit and aim that founded it.
But, alas! we are bereft of a relation more near than
is often derived from the kinship of blood.
My dear friend, it is impossible for me to write of
her in any adequate way. I might tell something
of her full and exact knowledge, of her artistic
poetry, her skill in sculpture, of her generosity; but
it would require an elaborate study to convey the
impression, derived by long acquaintance, of her
personality, at once so simple and complex. I have
sometimes imagined its sources,-whether, along
with her American genius and tact, some French
vein may not have contributed to her dainty expression and taste in the use of words, or some German ancestor transmitted her touch of quaintness.
Her literary and critical insight was exceedingly fine.
In conversing with her about eminent contemporaries, — Emerson, Carlyle, Longfellow, Browning,
Tennyson, Holmes, —-I never failed to recognize her
perception of the essential variety and flavor of each;
and was sometimes surprised by her interpretations
of familiar sentences, as if she had a private key to
them. In modeling heads she never flattered, but
brought out the finest quality, and it was so with
her criticisms. Also with her personal estimates.
She was versatile in languages, but the language of
depreciation she knew not.
Surely there was nothing more unintentionally
picturesque than t he receptions at " the Bottas"-as
we used to say. How gracious was our friend, how
self-forgetting, in bringing forward the new mu
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