The Bracebridges are at home--she rejoiced as much as we did over your event--Parthe is going at the end of November to do Officiating Verger to a friend of ours on a like event.--Her prospects are likewise so satisfactory, that I can rejoice and sympathize under any form she may choose to marry in. Otherwise I think that the day will come, when it will surprise us as much, to see people dressing up for a marriage, as it would to see them put on a fine coat for the Sacrament. Why should the Sacrament or Oath of Marriage be less sacred than any other? The letter goes on to speak of a visit recently paid to Mrs. Archer Clive, well known in her day as the authoress of _Poems by V._ and of _Paul Ferroll_, a sensational novel of some force,--a lady whose powers of heart and mind were housed in an infirm body. Miss Nightingale admired her talents and her character, and valued her friendship. But new friendships and varied interests did not bring satisfaction to Miss Nightingale. She was still constantly bent on pursuing a vocation of her own. Her parents caught eagerly at an opportunity which offered itself at the end of this year (1847), for giving, as they hoped, a new turn to her thoughts. CHAPTER V A WINTER IN ROME; AND AFTER (1847-1849) Six months of Rome and happiness.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1848). It was an event of some importance in the Nightingale family when Florence set out with Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, in the autumn of 1847, to spend the winter at Rome. The attraction to her was the society of Mrs. Bracebridge, the friend of whom she spoke as "her Ithuriel." Moreover the mental unrest from which Florence constantly suffered at home was beginning to tell upon her health. "All that I want to do in life," she wrote to her cousin Hilary, in explaining the motive of the tour, "depends upon my health, which, I am told, a winter in Rome will establish for ever." She took the foreign tour as a tonic to enable her the better to fulfil her vocation. By her parents and her sister the tour was regarded as a tonic which might divert her from it. They hoped that foreign travel would distract her thoughts, and dispel what they perhaps considered morbid fancies. She would enjoy pleasant companionship. She would see famous and beautiful things. She might return converted to the more comfortable belief that her duty lay in accepting life as she found it. The point of view comes out clearly enough in a letter from her sister to Miss Bonham Carter:--