Soon after my dear husband's death, we went to Spezia, as my health required change, and for some time we made it our headquarters, spending one winter at Florence, another at Genoa, where my son and his wife came to meet us, and where I had very great delight in the beautiful singing of our old friend Clara Novello, now Countess Gigliucci, who used to come to my house, and sing Handel to me. It was a real pleasure, and her voice was as pure and silvery as when I first heard her, years before. Another winter we spent at Turin. On returning to Spezia in the summer of 1861, the beautiful comet visible that year appeared for the first time the very evening we arrived. On the following, and during many evenings while it was visible, we used to row in a small boat a little way from shore, in order to see it to greater advantage. Nothing could be more poetical than the clear starlit heavens with this beautiful comet reflected, nay, almost repeated, in the calm glassy water of the gulf. The perfect silence and stillness of the scene was very impressive. I was now unoccupied, and felt the necessity of having something to do, desultory reading being insufficient to interest me; and as I had always considered the section on chemistry the weakest part of the connection of the "Physical Sciences," I resolved to write it anew. My daughters strongly opposed this, saying, "Why not write a new book?" They were right; it would have been lost time: so I followed their advice, though it was a formidable undertaking at my age, considering that the general character of science had greatly changed. By the improved state of the microscope, an invisible creation in the air, the earth, and the water, had been brought within the limits of human vision; the microscopic structure of plants and animals had been minutely studied, and by synthesis many substances had been formed of the elementary atoms similar to those produced by nature. Dr. Tyndall's experiments had proved the inconceivable minuteness of the atoms of matter; Mr. Gassiot and Professor Pluecher had published their experiments on the stratification of the electric light; and that series of discoveries by scientific men abroad, but chiefly by our own philosophers at home, which had been in progress for a course of years, prepared the way for Bunsen and Kirchhof's marvellous consummation. Such was the field opened to me; but instead of being discouraged by its magnitude, I seemed to have resumed the perseverance and energy of my youth, and began to write with courage, though I did not think I should live to finish even the sketch I had made, and which I intended to publish under the name of "Molecular and Microscopic Science," and assumed as my motto, "Deus magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis," from Saint Augustin.