That is, nothing in the form of rite or observance for things in themselves sacred, for you will tell me the Ages held the gibbet, the scourge and rack holy, if I let it pass without qualification. Still, I bid you to our marriage, though I trust even if you do not come you can see it whenever you see us. Some have great need to ask their friends at such a time, that they may afterwards certify such a thing has taken place because no trace of it remains. It can never be so with us, it could never be so with any who hold love sacred.... We shall be married the night after Christmas, and go on to New York after one day and night spent at home. We should love to stop there to see you” as long as you would like to have us, but our present engagements in Philadelphia will take us directly on there. We shall be in New York on Sunday, _where_ is not decided yet. With love to your wife, yours with friendly heart, MARIA WHITE. The book which this letter speaks of as absorbing Lowell’s time and thought was his “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets,” for which Miss White made a cover design and which was published by John Owen early in January, 1845. It will be remembered that Lowell began in the _Boston Miscellany_ and continued in the _Pioneer_ some studies on the Old Dramatists. The series might have gone on at greater length, for he was working a vein which yielded him great delight, and never indeed ceased to engage his attention. He resumed the theme in the last considerable venture of his life, and gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute in the spring of 1887, which was in effect a series of readings from the dramatists with running comments. “When I selected my topic for this new venture,” he said to his audience at the opening of the course, “I was returning to a first love. The second volume I ever printed, in 1843 I think it was,[42]--it is now a rare book, I am not sorry to know; I have not seen it for many years,--was mainly about the Old English Dramatists, if I am not mistaken. I dare say it was crude enough, but it was spontaneous and honest.”