A marriage made under such conditions could hardly prove a happy one. Her husband was unworthy of her. He treated her harshly, and he wasted the fortune she brought him. But for the sake of her two sons, Oscar and Alfred, she endured the miseries of her position as long as she was able, and devoted herself with assiduous self-sacrifice to their education. Meanwhile, the prosaic character of her daily life she knew how to relieve by privately indulging in dreams of travel, of adventure in far lands, and exploration in isles beyond the sunset. On the occasion of an excursion to Trieste, the sight of the sea revived in her all the old passionate longing, and the visions of her childhood became the fixed resolves and convictions of her womanhood. MADAME IDA PFEIFFER. II. At length she was free to indulge her long-cherished inclinations. Her sons stood no longer in need of her support; her husband was separated from her and was living in retirement at Lemberg; her means, though moderate, were not inadequate to the fulfilment of the projects she had in view. It was true she was forty-five years old, and that is not an age at which one usually attempts a tour round the world; but, on the other hand, it invested a woman with a certain degree of security, and it rendered more feasible an enterprise which in any case was beset with difficulties. Having completed the necessary preparations, she set out on her first great journey in March, 1842. It was natural enough that a woman of religious temperament should be attracted to the Holy Land. She visited its holiest places, and the effect they produced upon her imagination is a proof that years and the cares of domestic life had in no wise chilled its early warmth. Returning in December, she proceeded to compile a narrative of her experiences, which was published in 1843, under the title of "Travels of a Viennese Woman to the Holy Land," and immediately obtained a worldwide popularity. Its merits, however, are not of a literary character; its attractiveness is due entirely to its simplicity and straightforwardness. The reader at once discovers that he is dealing with a writer who makes no attempt to deceive, who neither diminishes nor exaggerates, nor adapts her facts to preconceived opinions. To this we may add that Madame Pfeiffer, though an accurate, is not a profound observer. From the sultry heat of the East she next betook herself to the sullen cold of the North; and the result of her wanderings in 1846 was a lively book upon Scandinavia and Iceland, describing perils which few men would care to confront, with evidently unaffected enjoyment.