For my part, Life seems to be to me "a battle and a march." I am sometimes well,--sometimes ill, and always restless. My late expedition to Germany did me a vast deal of good; and my health is better than it has been for years. So long as I keep out of doors and take exercise enough, I feel perfectly well. So soon as I shut myself up and begin to study, I feel perfectly ill. Thus the Sphinx's riddle--the secret of health--is discovered. In Germany I led an out-of-door life; bathing and walking from morning till night. I was at Boppard on the Rhine, in the old convent of Marienberg, now a Bathing establishment. I travelled a little in Germany; then passed through Belgium to England. In London I staid with Dickens; and had a very pleasant visit. His wife is a gentle, lovely character; and he has four children, all beautiful and good. I saw likewise _the_ raven, who is stuffed in the entry--and his successor, who stalks gravely in the garden. I am very sorry, my dear Margaret, that I cannot grant your request in regard to Mary's Journal. Just before I sailed for Europe, being in low spirits, and reflecting on the uncertainties of such an expedition as I was then beginning, I burned a great many letters and private papers, and among them this. I now regret it; but alas! too late. Ah! my dear Margaret! though somewhat wayward and restless, I most affectionately cherish the memory of my wife. You know how happily we lived together; and _I_ know that never again shall I be loved with such devotion, sincerity, and utter forgetfulness of self. Make her your model, and you will make your husband ever happy; and be to him as a household lamp irradiating his darkest hours. Give my best regards to him. I should like very much to visit you; but know not how I can bring it about. Kiss "young Astyanax" for me, and believe me ever affectionately your brother HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. Meanwhile a vast change in his life was approaching. He had met, seven years before in Switzerland, a maiden of nineteen, Frances Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton, a Boston merchant; and though his early sketch of her in "Hyperion" may have implied little on either side, it was fulfilled at any rate, after these years of acquaintance, by her consenting; to become his wife, an event which took place on the 13th of July, 1843, and was thus announced by him in a letter to Miss Eliza A. Potter of Portland, his first wife's elder sister. CAMBRIDGE, May 25, 1843.