our astonishment and raise our curiosity?  We might have been induced to pardon her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though it was sufficiently hazardous for a solitary woman, because it was prompted, perhaps, by her religious feelings,—­and incredible things, as we all know, are frequently accomplished under such an impulse.  But, for the present expedition, what reasonable motive can possibly be suggested?”

Madame Pfeiffer remarks that in all this a great injustice is, or would be, done to her; that she was a plain, inoffensive creature, and by no means desirous of drawing upon herself the observation of the crowd.  As a matter of fact, she was but following the bent of her natural disposition.  From her earliest childhood she had yearned to go forth into the wide world.  She could never meet a travelling-carriage without stopping to watch it, and envying the postilion who drove it or the persons it conveyed.  When she was ten or twelve years old, no reading had such a charm for her as books of voyages and travels; and then she began to repine at the happiness of every great navigator or discoverer, whose boldness revealed to him the secrets of lands and seas before unknown.

She travelled much with her parents, and afterwards with her husband, and thus her natural bias was encouraged.  It was not until her two sons were of age to be educated that she remained stationary—­on their account.  As the business concerns of her husband required his presence alternately in Vienna and in Lemberg, he intrusted to his wife the responsible duty of superintending their education—­feeling assured that, with her perseverance and affection, she could supply the place of both parents.

When this duty was discharged, and the education of her sons completed, the dreams and fancies of her youth once more revived within her.  She thought of the manners and customs of foreign lands, of remote islands girdled by the “melancholy main,” and dwelt so long on the great joy of treading “the blessed acres” trodden by the Saviour’s feet, that at last she resolved on a pilgrimage thither.  She made the journey to Palestine.  She visited Jerusalem, and other hallowed scenes, and she returned in safety.  She came, therefore, to the conclusion that she was not presumptuously tempting the providence of God, or laying herself open to the charge of wishing to excite the admiration of her contemporaries, if she followed her inward impulse, and once more adventured forth to see the world.  She knew that travel could not but broaden her views, elevate her thoughts, and inspire her with new sympathies.  Iceland, the next object of her desires, was a country where she hoped to see Nature under an entirely novel and peculiar aspect.  “I feel,” she says, “so wonderfully happy, and draw so close to my Maker, while gazing upon such scenes, that no difficulties or fatigues can deter me from seeking so great a reward.”

* * * * *