AUGUSTUS LOWELL. G41 



In 1864 the health of his wife necessitated his taking her and his 

 family abroad. They sailed for England in May, and for the next two 

 years and a half lived in Europe; the summers spent in travelling, the 

 winters in Paris. To one so temperamentally prone to a busy life at 

 home, this existence was no sinecure. With a wife at the point of death 

 as it was thought and four young children, Mr. Lowell had his hands 

 full. For a long time Mrs. Lowell did not gain at all. Indeed it was 

 only during the second summer, under the treatment of a country doctor 

 fortuitously encountered in the Austrian Tyrol, that she began to mend. 

 It is instructive, if tardy, to perceive now, in view of the widespread 

 professional ignorance on the subject, that what Mrs. Lowell was suffer- 

 ing from was nervous exhaustion, — a disease, this, which it may be 

 noted incidentally, Faraday, Darwin, Huxley, and Parkman all suffered 

 from without knowing it. 



Three little episodes may serve to mark these years of a search after 

 health. The first summer the wanderers happened to be at Bonchurch 

 in the Isle of Wight when the action between the " Kearsarge " and the 

 " Alabama" took place just across the channel off the coast of France. In 

 the second they were among the first to go to that nook in the Austrian 

 Salzkammergut, the village of Ischl, since become well known and popu- 

 lar. In the third and last they were lodged at Schwalbach near Wies- 

 baden, when that little watering place suddenly became one of the seats 

 of war, and thereupon was occupied alternately by the two opposing 

 forces, the invading Prussians and the native Hessians. Usually evacu- 

 ation considerately took place before occupation set in ; but once by acci- 

 dent the two interfered and a battle occurred between the rear guard of 

 the one army and the advance scouts of the other under the very windows 

 of the hotel. The Hessians, who had been quartered in the town, had 

 heard of the proposed Prussian advance and had at once started to 

 evacuate the place. But they were a little too Teutonically slow. The 

 invaders, although Prussians and landwehr at that, were, quite to their 

 own surprise, too quick for them; a belated squad of Hessians had got 

 only halfway up the hill on its way out when the Prussian cavalry was 

 heard cantering into the town. There was no time to go on unseen 

 when fortunately a friendly wood pile by the side of the road offered its 

 shelter.^ Instantly the squad deployed behind it and waited. Five min- 

 utes later three cavalrymen cantered past the hotel, their pistols pointed 

 at the windows as they went by, and started unsuspiciously up the hill. 

 The spectators in the secret stood waiting the surprise. Just as the 

 dragoons got abreast of the wood pile the squad deployed out and fired. 

 vol. xxxvn. — 41 



